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¹ My child, guard my sayings;
    store my commandments with you.
² Keep my commands and live,
    and my teaching like the apple of your eye.^[a]
3 Bind them on your fingers;
    write them on the tablet of your heart.
⁴ Say to wisdom,^[b] "you are my sister,"
    and you shall call insight,^[c] "intimate friend."^[d]
5 In order to guard yourself from an adulteress,^[e]
    from the foreigner who makes her words smooth.^[f]
6 For at the window of my house,
    through my lattice, I looked down.
⁷ And I saw among the simple,
    I observed among the youth,
    a young man lacking sense,^[g]
8 passing on the street at^[h] her corner,
    and he takes the road to her house,
⁹ at twilight, at the day's evening,
    in the midst of night and the darkness.
¹⁰ Then behold! A woman comes to meet him
    with the garment of a prostitute^[i] and a secret heart.^[j]
11 She is loud and stubborn;
    her feet do not stay at her house.
¹² Now in the street, now in the square,
    at^[k] every corner she lies in wait.
¹³ She took hold of ^[l] him and kissed him.
    Her face was impudent, and she said to him,
¹⁴ "Sacrifices of peace offerings are upon me;
    today^[m] I completed my vows.
¹⁵ So^[n] I have come out to meet you,
    to seek your face, and I have found you.
¹⁶ With coverings I have adorned my couch,
    spreads of the linen of Egypt;
¹⁷ I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
    aloes, and cinnamon.
¹⁸ Come, let us take our fill of love making,
    until the morning let us delight in love.
¹⁹ For there is no man^[o] in his home;
    he has gone on a long journey.^[p]
20 The bag of money he took in his hand,
    for on the day of the full moon he will come home."
²¹ She persuades him with the greatness of her teachings;
    with her smooth lips she compels him.
²² He goes after her suddenly;
    like an ox to the slaughter he goes,
    and like a stag to the instruction of a fool,
²³ until an arrow pierces his entrails,^[q]
    like a bird rushing into a snare,
    but he does not know that it will cost him his life.^[r]

²⁴ And now, my children, listen to me,
    and be attentive to the sayings of my mouth.
²⁵ May your heart not turn aside to her ways;
    do not stray into her path.
²⁶ For many slain she has laid low,
    and countless^[s] are all of her killings.
²⁷ The ways of Sheol^[t] are her house,
    descending to chambers of death.