CHAPTER 23
1When you sit to break bread with a ruler,
understand well what is before you,
2and put a knife to your gullet,
if you are a gluttonous man.
3Do not crave his delicacies,
4Do not strain to become rich,
through your understanding, leave off.
5Let your eyes but fly over it, it is gone,
for it will surely sprout wings,
like an eagle fly off to the heavens.
6Do not break bread with a stingy man,
nor crave his delicacies.
7For like one who gauges in his mind, so he is.
“Eat and drink,” he will say to you,
but his heart is not with you.
8Your crust that you eat you will vomit,
and you will ruin your pleasant words.
9In a fool’s ears do not speak,
for he will despise the insight of your words.
10Do not shift the age-old boundary stone,
nor enter the fields of orphans.
11For their redeemer is strong,
he will argue their case against you.
12Bring your heart to reproof,
and your ear to sayings of truth.
13Do not hold back reproof from a lad,
when you strike him with the rod, he won’t die.
14You, with the rod you should strike him
15My son, if your heart gets wisdom,
my heart, too, will rejoice,
16and my inward parts will exult
when your lips speak uprightness.
17Let your heart not envy offenders,
but in fear of the LORD all day long.
18For if you keep it, there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
19Listen, my son, and get wisdom,
and make your heart go straight on the way.
20Do not be with the guzzlers of wine,
with those who gorge on meat.
21For the guzzler and gorger will lose all,
and slumber will clothe him in rags.
22Listen to your father who begot you,
nor despise your mother when she grows old.
23Get truth and do not sell it,
wisdom, reproof, and discernment.
24The righteous man’s father will surely be gladdened,
the wise man’s begetter rejoices in him.
25Your father and mother rejoice,
and she who bore you will be gladdened.
26Pay mind, my son, to me,
and let your eyes keep my ways.
27For a whore is a deep ditch,
and a narrow well, the stranger-woman.
28Why, like a kidnapper she lies in wait,
and sweeps up the traitors among men.
29For whom “alack,” for whom “alas,”
for whom strife, for whom complaint?
For whom needless wounds,
30For those who linger over wine,
who come to try mixed drink.
31Do not regard wine in its redness,
when it shows its hue in the cup,
32In the end it bites like a snake,
and like a viper spews its poison.
33Your eyes will see strange things,
and your heart will speak perverseness,
34and you will be like one who beds in the sea,
who beds on the top of the rigging.
35“They struck me—I felt no hurt;
they beat me—I was unaware.
I will look for it again.”