Proverbs 5
The full text of Proverbs 5 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
incline your ear to my understanding,
2 that you may keep discretion
and your lips may guard knowledge.
3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death;
her steps take hold of Sheol.
6 She does not ponder the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it.
7 And now, my sons, listen to me,
and do not turn from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
9 lest you give your vigor to others
and your years to a cruel one,
10 lest strangers feast on your strength
and your labors go to a foreigner's house,
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 teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14 I was on the verge of utter ruin
in the midst of the assembled congregation."
15 Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your springs overflow into the streets,
streams of water in the public squares?
17 Let them be for you 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 satisfy you at all times;
be intoxicated always by her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
21 For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD,
and he weighs all his paths.
22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him;
he is caught in the cords of his sin.
23 He will die for lack of discipline,
and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray.
Translation notes (6)
- Proverbs 5:3a Zarah (זָרָה), rendered here as 'forbidden woman', is literally 'strange woman' or 'outsider'. The word need not mean a foreigner; in Proverbs it marks a woman outside the bounds of one's own marriage covenant, and the rendering 'forbidden' makes that moral sense explicit. The King James tradition kept the literal 'strange woman'.
- Proverbs 5:4a La'anah (לַעֲנָה), 'wormwood', refers to Artemisia species common in the Near East, proverbial for their intensely bitter taste and used throughout Scripture as an image of ruinous ends. The phrase cherev piyot, literally 'sword of mouths', is the Hebrew idiom for a blade sharpened on both edges, so that it cuts in every direction.
- Proverbs 5:14a The phrase renders the Hebrew qahal va'edah, literally 'assembly and congregation', two near-synonymous terms for the formally gathered community that also served as Israel's judicial body. The speaker's ruin is thus not merely private shame but public disgrace, possibly formal censure, before the whole legal assembly.
- Proverbs 5:15a Hebrew distinguishes bor (בּוֹר), 'cistern', a plastered pit that stores collected rainwater, from be'er (בְּאֵר), 'well', which taps living groundwater. In the arid climate of ancient Israel a household's private water source was a jealously guarded possession, making it a natural image for marital fidelity, the subject of the surrounding instruction.
- Proverbs 5:16a The Hebrew lacks an interrogative particle; yafutsu (יָפֻצוּ), 'let them be scattered', reads formally as a command or statement. The rendering as a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer follows the demand of verse 17, and the Septuagint makes this sense explicit by supplying a negative, 'let not your waters overflow'.
- Proverbs 5:19a The verb shagah (שגה), literally 'to stagger' or 'go astray', is rendered 'intoxicated' both here and in the warning that follows, so that marital delight and adultery appear as the same heady reeling directed toward different objects. The doe imagery, ayyelet ahavim, 'doe of loves', belongs to the love poetry also found in Song of Songs 2:9 and 4:5.
About this translation
The Trinity Bible Version (TBV) is Trinity Bible's own modern English translation, worked directly from the original Hebrew and honest to the earliest manuscripts. It was completed in 2026 — the most modern English Bible translation — and is exclusive to Trinity Bible. Every chapter, including all of Proverbs, is free to read here on the web.
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