9. lest you give your honor to othersand your years to the merciless,
10. lest strangers take their fill of your strength,and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
11. and at the end of your life you groan,when your flesh and body are consumed,
12. and you say, “How I hated discipline,and my heart despised reproof!
13. I did not listen to the voice of my teachersor incline my ear to my instructors.
14. I am at the brink of utter ruinin the assembled congregation.”
15. Drink water from your own cistern,flowing water from your own well.
16. Should your springs be scattered abroad,streams of water in the streets?
17. Let them be for yourself alone,and not for strangers with you.
18. Let your fountain be blessed,and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19. a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;be intoxicated always in her love.
20. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden womanand embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
21. For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,and he ponders all his paths.
22. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.