Verse 1. When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face.
Verse 2. And put a knife to thy throat, if it be so that thou have thy soul in thy own power.
Verse 3. Be not desirous of his meats, in which is the bread of deceit.
Verse 4. Labour not to be rich: but set bounds to thy prudence.
Verse 5. Lift not up thy eyes to riches which thou canst not have: because they shall make themselves wings like those of an eagle, and shall fly towards heaven.
Verse 6. Eat not with an envious man, and desire not his meats:
Verse 7. Because like a soothsayer, and diviner, he thinketh that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee.
Verse 8. The meats which thou hadst eaten, thou shalt vomit up: and shalt loose thy beautiful words.
Verse 9. Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of thy speech.
Verse 10. Touch not the bounds of little ones: and enter not into the field of the fatherless:
Verse 11. For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee.
Verse 12. Let thy heart apply itself to instruction: and thy ears to words of knowledge.
Verse 13. Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.
Verse 14. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.
Verse 15. My son, if thy mind be wise, my heart shall rejoice with thee:
Verse 16. And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak what is right.
Verse 17. Let not thy heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long:
Verse 18. Because thou shalt have hope in the latter end, and thy expectation shall not be taken away.
Verse 19. Hear thou, my son, and be wise: and guide thy mind in the way.
Verse 20. Be not in the feasts of great drinkers, nor in their revellings, who contribute flesh to eat:
Verse 21. Because they that give themselves to drinking, and that club together shall be consumed; and drowsiness shall be clothed with rags.
Verse 22. Hearken to thy father, that beget thee: and despise not thy mother when she is old.
Verse 23. Buy truth, and do not sell wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
Verse 24. The father of the just rejoiceth greatly: he that hath begotten a wise son, shall have joy in him.
Verse 25. Let thy father, and thy mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore thee.
Verse 26. My son, give me thy heart: and let thy eyes keep my ways.
Verse 27. For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
Verse 28. She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill.
Verse 29. Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
Verse 30. Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink of their cups.
Verse 31. Look not upon the wine when it is yellow, when the colour thereof shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly,
Verse 32. But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk.
Verse 33. Thy eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things.
Verse 34. And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep, when the stern is lost.
Verse 35. And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain: they drew me, and I felt not: when shall I awake, and find wine again?