Proverbs 6:1-35
6 My 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,
3 take 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.+
4 Do not give any sleep to your eyes, nor any slumber to your beaming eyes.+
5 Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand and like a bird from the hand of the birdcatcher.+
6 Go to the ant,+ you lazy one;+ see its ways and become wise.
7 Although it has no commander, officer or ruler,
8 it prepares its food even in the summer;+ it has gathered its food supplies even in the harvest.
9 How long, you lazy one, will you keep lying down?+ When will you rise up from your sleep?+
10 A little more sleep, a little more slumbering, a little more folding of the hands in lying down,+
11 and your poverty will certainly come just like some rover,+ and your want like an armed man.*+
12 A good-for-nothing man,*+ a man of hurtfulness,* is walking with crookedness of speech,*+
13 winking with his eye,+ making signs with his foot, making indications with his fingers.+
14 Perverseness is in his heart.+ He is fabricating something bad all the time.+ He keeps sending out merely contentions.+
15 That is why suddenly there will come his disaster;+ in an instant he will be broken, and there will be no healing.+
16 There are six things that Jehovah does hate;+ yes, seven are things detestable to his soul:+
17 lofty eyes,+ a false tongue,+ and hands that are shedding innocent blood,+
18 a heart fabricating hurtful schemes,+ feet that are in a hurry to run to badness,+
19 a false witness that launches forth lies,+ and anyone sending forth contentions among brothers.+
20 Observe, O my son, the commandment of your father,+ and do not forsake the law of your mother.+
21 Tie them* upon your heart constantly;+ bind them upon your throat.+
22 When 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.
23 For the commandment is a lamp,+ and a light the law is,+ and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,+
24 to guard you against the bad woman,*+ against the smoothness of the tongue of the foreign woman.+
25 Do not desire her prettiness in your heart,+ and may she not take you with her lustrous eyes,+
26 because 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.+
27 Can a man rake together fire into his bosom and yet his very garments not be burned?+
28 Or can a man walk upon the coals and his feet themselves not be scorched?
29 Likewise with anyone having relations with the wife of his fellowman,+ no one touching her will remain unpunishable.+
30 People do not despise a thief just because he commits thievery to fill his soul when he is hungry.
31 But, when found, he will make it good with seven times as much; all the valuables of his house he will give.+
32 Anyone committing adultery with a woman is in want of heart;*+ he that does it is bringing his own soul to ruin.*+
33 A plague* and dishonor he will find,+ and his reproach itself will not be wiped out.+
34 For the rage of an able-bodied man is jealousy,+ and he will not show compassion in the day of vengeance.+
35 He will have no consideration for any sort of ransom, neither will he show willingness, no matter how large you make the present.
Footnotes
^ Lit., “stamp yourself down.”
^ Or, “like an insolent man.” Lit., “like a man of a shield.” Heb., keʼishʹ ma·ghenʹ.
^ Lit., “mouth.”
^ “A man of hurtfulness.” Heb., ʼish ʼaʹwen.
^ Lit., “A man of belial.” Heb., ʼa·dhamʹ beli·yaʹʽal.
^ “Them,” masc., therefore not referring to “commandment” and “law” (in vs 20), both fem., but may be referring to the father’s “sayings” (as in 4:10, 20), masc. pl.
^ Or, “she,” fem.
^ “Bad woman,” MTSyVg; LXX, “married woman.”
^ Or, “is lacking good motive.” Heb., chasar-levʹ.
^ Or, “destruction.”
^ Or, “stroke.”
