Proverbs 23:1–35

¹In case you should sit down to feed yourself with a king, you should diligently consider what is before you,²and you must put a knife to your throat if you are the owner of soul[ful desire].³Do not show yourself craving his tasty dishes, as it is the food of lies.

⁴Do not toil to gain riches. Cease from your own understanding.⁵Have you caused your eyes to glance at it, when it is nothing? For without fail it makes wings for itself like those of an eagle and flies away toward the heavens.

⁶Do not feed yourself with the food of anyone of ungenerous eye, nor show yourself craving his tasty dishes.⁷For as one that has calculated within his soul, so he is. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart itself is not with you.⁸Your morsel that you have eaten, you will vomit it out, and you will have wasted your pleasant words.

⁹Into the ears of a stupid one do not speak, for he will despise your discreet words.

¹⁰Do not move back the boundary of long ago, and into the field of fatherless boys do not enter.¹¹For their Redeemer is strong; he himself will plead their cause with you.

¹²Do bring your heart to discipline and your ear to the sayings of knowledge.

¹³Do not hold back discipline from the mere boy. In case you beat him with the rod, he will not die.¹⁴With the rod you yourself should beat him, that you may deliver his very soul from She′ol itself.

¹⁵My son, if your heart has become wise, my heart will rejoice, even mine.¹⁶And my kidneys will exult when your lips speak uprightness.

¹⁷Let your heart not be envious of sinners, but be in the fear of Jehovah all day long.¹⁸For in that case there will exist a future, and your own hope will not be cut off.

¹⁹You, O my son, hear and become wise, and lead your heart on in the way.

²⁰Do not come to be among heavy drinkers of wine, among those who are gluttonous eaters of flesh.²¹For a drunkard and a glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe one with mere rags.

²²Listen to your father who caused your birth, and do not despise your mother just because she has grown old.²³Buy truth itself and do not sell it—wisdom and discipline and understanding.²⁴The father of a righteous one will without fail be joyful; the one becoming father to a wise one will also rejoice in him.²⁵Your father and your mother will rejoice, and she that gave birth to you will be joyful.

²⁶My son, do give your heart to me, and may those eyes of yours take pleasure in my own ways.²⁷For a prostitute is a deep pit and a foreign woman is a narrow well.²⁸Surely she, just like a robber, lies in wait; and among men she increases the treacherous ones.

²⁹Who has woe? Who has uneasiness? Who has contentions? Who has concern? Who has wounds for no reason? Who has dullness of eyes?³⁰Those staying a long time with the wine, those coming in to search out mixed wine.³¹Do not look at wine when it exhibits a red color, when it gives off its sparkle in the cup, [when] it goes with a slickness.³²At its end it bites just like a serpent, and it secretes poison just like a viper.³³Your own eyes will see strange things, and your own heart will speak perverse things.³⁴And you will certainly become like one lying down in the heart of the sea, even like one lying down at the top of a mast.³⁵“They have struck me, but I did not become sick; they have smitten me, but I did not know it. When shall I wake up? I shall seek it yet some more.”