1When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you,
2and put a knife to your throat if you are a man of appetite.
3Do not crave his delicacies, for it is deceptive food.
4Do not wear yourself out to get rich; from your own understanding, cease.
5Should your eyes fly to it, it is gone; for it surely makes itself wings, like an eagle it flies off to the heavens.
6Do not eat the bread of one with an evil eye, and do not crave his delicacies,
7for as he reckons within himself, so is he. ‘Eat and drink,’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
8The morsel you have eaten you will vomit up, and you will have wasted your pleasant words.
9Do not speak in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
10Do not move an ancient boundary, and do not enter the fields of the fatherless,
11for their Redeemer is strong; he himself will plead their case against you.
12Bring your heart to discipline, and your ears to words of knowledge.
13Do not withhold discipline from a boy; though you strike him with the rod, he will not die.
14You shall strike him with the rod, and you will rescue his life from Sheol.
15My son, if your heart is wise, my own heart will rejoice, yes, mine;
16and my inmost being will exult when your lips speak what is right.
17Do not let your heart envy sinners, but rather be in the fear of Yahweh all the day,
18for surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.
19Hear, you, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way.
20Do not be among heavy drinkers of wine, among gluttonous eaters of meat,
21for the drunkard and the glutton come to poverty, and drowsiness clothes one in rags.
22Listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
23Buy truth and do not sell it—wisdom and discipline and understanding.
24The father of a righteous one will greatly rejoice, and one who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.
25Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her who bore you rejoice.
26Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes delight in my ways.
27For a prostitute is a deep pit, and a foreign woman a narrow well.
28Indeed, she lies in wait like a robber, and multiplies the treacherous among men.
29Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaint? Who has needless wounds? Who has redness of eyes?
30Those who linger over wine, those who go to search out mixed drink.
31Do not look at wine when it is red, when it gives its sparkle in the cup, when it goes down smoothly.
32In the end it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder.
33Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will speak perverse things.
34And you will be like one lying down in the heart of the sea, like one lying down at the top of the mast.
35“They struck me, but I felt no pain; they beat me, but I did not know it. When will I wake up? I will seek it yet again.”
Open in the interactive reader →