Proverbs 6:1–35

¹My son, if you have gone surety for your fellowman, [if] you have given your handshake even to the stranger,²[if] you have been ensnared by the sayings of your mouth, [if] you have been caught by the sayings of your mouth,³take this action then, my son, and deliver yourself, for you have come into the palm of your fellowman: Go humble yourself and storm your fellowman with importunities.⁴Do not give any sleep to your eyes, nor any slumber to your beaming eyes.⁵Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand and like a bird from the hand of the birdcatcher.

⁶Go to the ant, you lazy one; see its ways and become wise.⁷Although it has no commander, officer or ruler,⁸it prepares its food even in the summer; it has gathered its food supplies even in the harvest.⁹How long, you lazy one, will you keep lying down? When will you rise up from your sleep?¹⁰A little more sleep, a little more slumbering, a little more folding of the hands in lying down,¹¹and your poverty will certainly come just like some rover, and your want like an armed man.

¹²A good‐for‐nothing man, a man of hurtfulness, is walking with crookedness of speech,¹³winking with his eye, making signs with his foot, making indications with his fingers.¹⁴Perverseness is in his heart. He is fabricating something bad all the time. He keeps sending out merely contentions.¹⁵That is why suddenly there will come his disaster; in an instant he will be broken, and there will be no healing.

¹⁶There are six things that Jehovah does hate; yes, seven are things detestable to his soul:¹⁷lofty eyes, a false tongue, and hands that are shedding innocent blood,¹⁸a heart fabricating hurtful schemes, feet that are in a hurry to run to badness,¹⁹a false witness that launches forth lies, and anyone sending forth contentions among brothers.

²⁰Observe, O my son, the commandment of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother.²¹Tie them upon your heart constantly; bind them upon your throat.²²When you walk about, it will lead you; when you lie down, it will stand guard over you; and when you have waked up, it itself will make you its concern.²³For the commandment is a lamp, and a light the law is, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,²⁴to guard you against the bad woman, against the smoothness of the tongue of the foreign woman.²⁵Do not desire her prettiness in your heart, and may she not take you with her lustrous eyes,²⁶because in behalf of a woman prostitute [one comes down] to a round loaf of bread; but as regards another man’s wife, she hunts even for a precious soul.²⁷Can a man rake together fire into his bosom and yet his very garments not be burned?²⁸Or can a man walk upon the coals and his feet themselves not be scorched?²⁹Likewise with anyone having relations with the wife of his fellowman, no one touching her will remain unpunishable.³⁰People do not despise a thief just because he commits thievery to fill his soul when he is hungry.³¹But, when found, he will make it good with seven times as much; all the valuables of his house he will give.³²Anyone committing adultery with a woman is in want of heart; he that does it is bringing his own soul to ruin.³³A plague and dishonor he will find, and his reproach itself will not be wiped out.³⁴For the rage of an able‐bodied man is jealousy, and he will not show compassion in the day of vengeance.³⁵He will have no consideration for any sort of ransom, neither will he show willingness, no matter how large you make the present.