23
1 When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you,
2 and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite.
3 Do not crave his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.
4 Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
have the sense to stop.
5 Will you set your eyes on it?
It is gone, for it surely makes wings for itself and flies toward heaven like an eagle.
6 Do not eat the bread of a stingy man or crave his delicacies,
7 for as he calculates within himself, so he is.
“Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
8 You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten and waste your pleasant words.
9 Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
10 Do not move the ancient boundary marker or enter the fields of the fatherless,
11 for their redeemer is strong;
he will plead their cause against you.
12 Apply your heart to discipline and your ears to words of knowledge.
13 Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.
14 You will strike him with the rod and deliver his life from Sheol.
15 My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will rejoice.
16 My inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak what is right.
17 Do not let your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the LORD all day long.
18 For surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.
19 Listen, my son, and be wise;
guide your heart in the way.
20 Do not be among those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat,
21 for the drunkard and the glutton will become poor, and drowsiness will clothe a man in rags.
22 Listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
23 Buy truth and do not sell it;
buy wisdom, discipline, and understanding.
24 The father of a righteous child will greatly rejoice;
whoever fathers a wise child will have joy in him.
25 Let your father and mother be glad;
let her who bore you rejoice.
26 My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.
27 For a prostitute is a deep pit, and an adulterous woman is a narrow well.
28 She too lies in wait like a robber and increases the unfaithful among mankind.
29 Who has woe?
Who has sorrow?
Who has strife?
Who has complaints?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has bloodshot eyes?
30 Those who linger over wine, those who go to seek out mixed wine.
31 Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.
32 In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper.
33 Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will speak perverse things.
34 You will be like one lying in the heart of the sea, like one lying at the top of a mast.
35 “They struck me, but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When will I awake?
I will seek it yet again.”