¹My son, keep my sayings,

And treasure up my commandments with you.

²Keep my commandments and live,

And my instruction like the apple of your eye.

³Bind them to your fingers;

Write them on the tablet of your heart.

⁴Say to wisdom,

“You are my sister”,

And call understanding your acquaintance,

⁵To guard you from a stranger-woman

– From a foreign lady who flatters with her talk.

⁶For at the window of my house,

Through the lattice window, I peered out,

⁷And I looked among the gullible,

And I discerned among the sons a weak-minded young man,

⁸Crossing the street at her corner,

And striding down the way to her house.

⁹In the darkness at the end of the day,

In the dead of night and thick darkness,

¹⁰There was a woman meeting him,

In a prostitute's attire,

Whose intention was well guarded.

¹¹She is restive and unruly;

Her feet do not stay in her house.

¹²One moment she is out in the open;

Another moment she is on the streets,

And she lurks at every corner.

¹³And she took hold of him and kissed him;

With brazen face, she said to him,

¹⁴“I have got peace-sacrifices with me;

Today I fulfilled my vows,

¹⁵Which is why I have come out to meet you,

To seek your company diligently,

And I have found you.

¹⁶I have made up my bed with drapery

And with carvings and linen from Egypt.

¹⁷I have sprinkled myrrh on my bed,

And aloes aroma and cinnamon.

¹⁸Come let us luxuriate in passion until the morning.

Let us revel in love,

¹⁹Because my husband is not at home;

He has gone on a distant journey.

²⁰He has taken a bag of money in his hand;

On the day of the new moon he will come back home.”

²¹She seduces him with the abundance of her captivating talk;

With her flattering lips she entices him.

²²Suddenly he goes after her,

As an ox goes to slaughter,

And as a miscreant goes to fetters for correction,

²³When an arrow cuts his liver in pieces,

Like a bird hastening towards a snare,

Not knowing that it is for its life.

²⁴So now, sons, hear me;

Pay attention to the sayings I utter.

²⁵Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways;

Do not stray onto her paths,

²⁶For she has caused many to fall as casualties,

And there are mighty men among all her slain.

²⁷Her home lodges the ways of the grave,

Which go down to chambers of death.