The White Stone

4 Listen, children, to a father’s instruction; pay attention, in order to gain insight;
² for I am giving you good advice; so don’t abandon my teaching.
³ For I too was once a child to my father; and my mother, too, thought of me as her special darling.
⁴ He too taught me; he said to me, “Let your heart treasure my words; keep my commands, and live;
⁵ gain wisdom, gain insight; don’t forget or turn from the words I am saying.
⁶ Don’t abandon [wisdom]; then she will preserve you; love her, and she will protect you.
⁷ The beginning of wisdom is: get wisdom! And along with all your getting, get insight!
⁸ Cherish her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will bring you honor;
⁹ she will give your head a garland of grace, bestow on you a crown of glory.”

¹⁰ Listen, my son, receive what I say, and the years of your life will be many.
¹¹ I’m directing you on the way of wisdom, guiding you in paths of uprightness;
¹² when you walk, your step won’t be hindered; and if you run, you won’t stumble.
¹³ Hold fast to discipline, don’t let it go; guard it, for it is your life.

¹⁴ Don’t follow the path of the wicked or walk on the way of evildoers.
¹⁵ Avoid it, don’t go on it, turn away from it, and pass on.
¹⁶ For they can’t sleep if they haven’t done evil, they are robbed of sleep unless they make someone fall.
¹⁷ For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.
¹⁸ But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining ever brighter until full daylight.
¹⁹ The way of the wicked is like darkness; they don’t even know what makes them stumble.

²⁰ My son, pay attention to what I am saying; incline your ear to my words.
²¹ Don’t let them out of your sight, keep them deep in your heart;
²² for they are life to those who find them and health to their whole being.

²³ Above everything else, guard your heart; for it is the source of life’s consequences.
²⁴ Keep crooked speech out of your mouth, banish deceit from your lips.
²⁵ Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze on what lies in front of you.
²⁶ Level the path for your feet, let all your ways be properly prepared;
²⁷ then deviate neither right nor left; and keep your foot far from evil.

5 My son, pay attention to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding;
² so that you will preserve discretion and your lips keep watch over knowledge.

³ For the lips of a woman who is a stranger drop honey, her mouth is smoother than oil;
⁴ but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death, her steps lead straight to Sh’ol;
⁶ she doesn’t walk the level path of life —her course wanders all over, but she doesn’t know it.
⁷ So now, children, listen to me; don’t turn away from what I am saying:
⁸ distance your way from her, stay far from the door of her house;
⁹ so that you won’t give your vigor to others and your years to someone who is cruel,
¹⁰ so strangers won’t be filled with your strength and what you worked for go to a foreign house.
¹¹ Then, when your flesh and bones have shrunk, at the end of your life, you would moan,
¹² “How I hated discipline! My whole being despised reproof,
¹³ I ignored what my teachers said, I didn’t listen to my instructors.
¹⁴ I took part in almost every kind of evil, and the whole community knew it.”

¹⁵ Drink the water from your own cistern, fresh water from your own well.
¹⁶ Let what your springs produce be dispersed outside, streams of water flowing in the streets;
¹⁷ but let them be for you alone and not for strangers with you.
¹⁸ Let your fountain, the wife of your youth, be blessed; find joy in her —
¹⁹ a lovely deer, a graceful fawn; let her breasts satisfy you at all times,
always be infatuated with her love.
²⁰ My son, why be infatuated with an unknown woman? Why embrace the body of a loose woman?
²¹ For Adonai is watching a man’s ways; he surveys all his paths.
²² A wicked person’s own crimes will trap him, he will be held fast by the ropes of his sin.
²³ He will die from lack of discipline; the magnitude of his folly will make him totter and fall.