• 1 When you sit to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before you:
  • 2 And put a knife to your throat, if you be a man given to appetite.
  • 3 Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.
  • 4 Labor not to be rich: cease from your own wisdom.
  • 5 Will you set your eyes on that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
  • 6 Eat you not the bread of him that has an evil eye, neither desire you his dainty meats:
  • 7 For as he thinks in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, said he to you; but his heart is not with you.
  • 8 The morsel which you have eaten shall you vomit up, and lose your sweet words.
  • 9 Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of your words.
  • 10 Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
  • 11 For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with you.
  • 12 Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to the words of knowledge.
  • 13 Withhold not correction from the child: for if you beat him with the rod, he shall not die.
  • 14 You shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell.
  • 15 My son, if your heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.
  • 16 Yes, my reins shall rejoice, when your lips speak right things.
  • 17 Let not your heart envy sinners: but be you in the fear of the LORD all the day long.
  • 18 For surely there is an end; and your expectation shall not be cut off.
  • 19 Hear you, my son, and be wise, and guide your heart in the way.
  • 20 Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
  • 21 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
  • 22 Listen to your father that begat you, and despise not your mother when she is old.
  • 23 Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
  • 24 The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begets a wise child shall have joy of him.
  • 25 Your father and your mother shall be glad, and she that bore you shall rejoice.
  • 26 My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.
  • 27 For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
  • 28 She also lies in wait as for a prey, and increases the transgressors among men.
  • 29 Who has woe? who has sorrow? who has contentions? who has babbling? who has wounds without cause? who has redness of eyes?
  • 30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
  • 31 Look not you on the wine when it is red, when it gives his color in the cup, when it moves itself aright.
  • 32 At the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder.
  • 33 Your eyes shall behold strange women, and your heart shall utter perverse things.
  • 34 Yes, you shall be as he that lies down in the middle of the sea, or as he that lies on the top of a mast.
  • 35 They have stricken me, shall you say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.