Proverbs

Proverbs 5

The Peril of Adultery

Lord teach me to pay attention to Your wisdom and to lend my ear to Your understanding, that I may preserve discretion and my lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey and her mouth is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell. Lest I ponder her path of life her ways are unstable, guide me Lord and have mercy on me so that I may not know them. Therefore I want to hear You my Lord, my Father, and do not ever want to depart from the words of Your mouth. Lord, guide my way far from hers and do not let me go near her house, lest I give my honour to others and my years to the cruel one; lest aliens be filled with my wealth and my labours go to the house of a foreigner; and my mourn at last when my flesh and my body are consumed and say "How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction! I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! I was on the verge of total ruin, in the midst of the assembly and congregation." Lord teach me to drink water from my own cistern and running water from my own well. Should my fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them only be my own and not for strangers with me. Let my fountain be blessed, and let me rejoice with the wife of my youth as a loving deer and a graceful doe let her breasts satisfy me at all times and always be enraptured with her love. For why should I, my Father, be enraptured by an immoral woman and embraced in the arms of a seductress? For the ways of man are before the eyes of You my Lord and You ponder all his paths. Lord help me not to be like the wicked man, his own iniquities entrap him and he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. Lord, please have mercy on me and teach me Your wisdom and understanding.