Proverbs 23:1-35
23 In case you should sit down to feed yourself with a king, you should diligently consider what is before you,+
2 and you must put a knife to your throat if you are the owner of soul[ful desire].*+
3 Do not show yourself craving his tasty dishes, as it is the food of lies.+
4 Do not toil to gain riches.+ Cease from your own understanding.+
5 Have 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.+
6 Do not feed yourself with the food of anyone of ungenerous eye,*+ nor show yourself craving his tasty dishes.+
7 For 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.+
8 Your morsel that you have eaten, you will vomit it out, and you will have wasted your pleasant words.+
9 Into the ears of a stupid one do not speak,+ for he will despise your discreet words.+
10 Do not move back the boundary of long ago,+ and into the field of fatherless boys do not enter.+
11 For their Redeemer* is strong; he himself will plead their cause with you.+
12 Do bring your heart to discipline and your ear to the sayings of knowledge.+
13 Do not hold back discipline from the mere boy.+ In case you beat him with the rod, he will not die.
14 With the rod you yourself should beat him, that you may deliver his very soul from Sheʹol* itself.+
15 My son, if your heart has become wise,+ my heart will rejoice, even mine.+
16 And my kidneys* will exult when your lips speak uprightness.+
17 Let your heart not be envious of sinners,+ but be in the fear of Jehovah all day long.+
18 For in that case there will exist a future,+ and your own hope will not be cut off.+
19 You, O my son, hear and become wise, and lead your heart on in the way.+
20 Do not come to be among heavy drinkers of wine,+ among those who are gluttonous eaters of flesh.+
21 For a drunkard and a glutton will come to poverty,+ and drowsiness will clothe one with mere rags.+
22 Listen to your father who caused your birth,+ and do not despise your mother just because she has grown old.+
23 Buy truth itself+ and do not sell it—wisdom and discipline and understanding.+
24 The father of a righteous one will without fail be joyful;+ the one becoming father to a wise one will also rejoice in him.+
25 Your father and your mother will rejoice, and she that gave birth to you will be joyful.+
26 My son, do give your heart to me, and may those eyes of yours take pleasure in my own ways.+
27 For a prostitute is a deep pit+ and a foreign woman is a narrow well.
28 Surely she, just like a robber, lies in wait;+ and among men she increases the treacherous ones.+
29 Who has woe? Who has uneasiness? Who has contentions?+ Who has concern? Who has wounds for no reason? Who has dullness of eyes?
30 Those staying a long time with the wine,+ those coming in to search out mixed wine.+
31 Do 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.
32 At its end it bites just like a serpent,+ and it secretes poison just like a viper.+
33 Your own eyes will see strange things,* and your own heart will speak perverse things.+
34 And 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.”+
Footnotes
^ Lit., “soul.” Heb., neʹphesh; Lat., aʹni·mam.
^ Lit., “evil as to eye.” Heb., raʽ ʽaʹyin.
^ “Their Redeemer (Repurchaser).” By extension of thought, “their Avenger (Vindicator).” Heb., gho·ʼalamʹ. See Job 19:25 and Ps 19:14 ftns.
^ “From Sheol.” Heb., mish·sheʼohlʹ; LXX, “death”; Syr., shiul; Lat., in·ferʹno. See App 4B.
^ Or, “my deepest emotions.” Heb., khil·yoh·thaiʹ.
^ Or, “strange women.”
