Read the Bible

¹ My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.

² Keep my commandments, and live; and my teaching, as the apple of thine eye.

³ Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the tablet of thy heart.

⁴ Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister, and call intelligence [thy] kinswoman:

⁵ that they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger who flattereth with her words.

⁶ For at the window of my house, I looked forth through my lattice,

⁷ and I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the sons, a young man void of understanding,

⁸ passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house,

⁹ in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the blackness of night and the darkness.

¹⁰ And behold, there met him a woman in the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart.

¹¹ She is clamorous and unmanageable; her feet abide not in her house:

¹² now without, now in the broadways,—and she lieth in wait at every corner.

¹³ And she caught him and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him,

¹⁴ I have peace-offerings with me; this day have I paid my vows:

¹⁵ therefore came I forth to meet thee, to seek earnestly thy face, and I have found thee.

¹⁶ I have decked my bed with tapestry coverlets of variegated linen from Egypt;

¹⁷ I have perfumed my couch with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

¹⁸ Come, let us revel in love until the morning, let us delight ourselves with loves.

¹⁹ For the husband is not at home, he is gone a long journey;

²⁰ he hath taken the money-bag with him, he will come home on the day of the full moon.

²¹ With her much enticement she beguiled him; with the smoothness of her lips she constrained him.

²² He went after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, and as stocks [serve] for the correction of the fool;

²³ till an arrow strike through his liver: as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for its life.

²⁴ And now, ye sons, hearken unto me, and attend to the words of my mouth.

²⁵ Let not thy heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths:

²⁶ for she hath cast down many wounded, and all slain by her were strong.

²⁷ Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.