Proverbs 23

¹When thou shalt sit to eat with a Prince, attend diligently what things are set before thy face:

²and set a knife in thy throat, if notwithstanding thou have thy soul in thine own power.

³Desire not his meats, in which is the breath of lying.

⁴Labour not to be rich: but set a mean to thy prudence.

⁵Lift not up thine eyes to the riches, which thou canst not have: because they shall make to themselves wings as of an eagle, and shall fly into heaven.

⁶Eat not with an envious man, and desire not his meats.

⁷Because after the similitude of a soothsayer, and diviner, he esteemeth that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee.

⁸The meats which thou hadst eaten thou shalt vomit up: and shalt lose thy beautiful words.

⁹Speak not in the ears of the unwise: because they will despise the doctrine of thy speech.

¹⁰Touch not the bounds of little ones: and into the field of pupils enter not.

¹¹For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee.

¹²Let thy heart enter into doctrine: and thine ears to words of knowledge.

¹³Withdraw not discipline from a child: for if thou shalt strike him with the rod, he shall not die.

¹⁴Thou shalt strike him with the rod: and deliver his soul from hell.

¹⁵My son, if thy mind shall be wise, my heart shall be glad with thee:

¹⁶And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak right things.

¹⁷Let not thy heart envy sinners: but in the fear of our Lord be thou all the day:

¹⁸because thou shalt have hope in the later end, and thine exaltation shall not be taken away.

¹⁹Hear my son, & be wise: & direct thy mind in the way.

²⁰Be not in the feasts of great drinkers, nor in their comessations, which contribute flesh together to eat:

²¹because they that are given to drinking, and that pay shots, shall be consumed, and drowsiness shall be clothed with rags.

²²Hear thy father, that begot thee: and contemn not thy mother when she is old.

²³Buy truth, and sell not wisdom, and doctrine, and intelligence.

²⁴The father of the just rejoiceth with gladness: he that hath begotten a wiseman, shall rejoice in him.

²⁵Let thy father be glad and thy mother, and let her rejoice that bare thee.

²⁶My son give me thy heart: & let thine eyes keep my ways.

²⁷For an harlot is a deep ditch: & a strange woman a narrow pit.

²⁸She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and whom she shall see not circumspect, she will kill.

²⁹To whom is woe? To whose father woe? To whom brawls? To whom ditches? To whom wounds without cause? To whom blood-shedding eyes?

³⁰Is it not to them that pass their time in wine, and study to drink out their cups?

³¹Behold not wine when it waxeth yellow, when the colour thereof shall shine in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly,

³²but in the end, it will bite like a snake, and as a basilisk it will pour abroad poisons.

³³Thine eyes shall see strange women, and thy heart shall speak perverse things.

³⁴And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as the governor fast asleep, the stern being lost.

³⁵And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not grieved: they drew me, and I felt not: When shall I awake, and find wines again?