Proverbs 23

1When you sit to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what lies before you.

2Put a knife to your throat if you are a master of appetite.

3Do not crave his delicacies, for they are lying food.

4Do not labor to become rich; cease from your own understanding.

5Will your eyes fly to that which is not? For it makes wings for itself like an eagle and flies away to the heavens.

6Do not eat the bread of one whose eye is evil, nor desire his delicacies.

7For as he thinks in his soul, so he is. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

8You will vomit up the morsel you ate and waste your pleasant words.

9Do not speak in the ears of a fool, for he will scorn the wisdom of your words.

10Do not remove an ancient boundary, nor enter the fields of the fatherless.

11for their redeemer is mighty; he will contend with you over their dispute.

12Apply your heart to discipline, and your ears to words of knowledge.

13Do not withhold discipline from a child, for if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

14Strike him with the rod, and deliver his soul from Sheol.

15My son, if your heart is wise, my heart will rejoice—even mine.

16My inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak upright things.

17Do not let your heart envy sinners, but fear Yahweh all day long.

18Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.

19Pay attention, my son, be wise, and direct your heart along the path.

20Do not be among wine drunkards, among gluttons for meat.

21For drunkards and gluttons will be dispossessed, and drowsiness will dress them in rags.

22Listen to your father who fathered you, and do not despise your mother when she grows old.

23Acquire truth and do not sell it—wisdom, discipline, and understanding.

24The father of the righteous greatly rejoices; he who fathers a wise son rejoices in him.

25Let your father rejoice, and let your mother who bore you exult.

26My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes delight in my ways and keep them.

27For a prostitute is a deep pit, and a foreign woman a narrow well.

28She also lies in wait as for prey, and multiplies the treacherous among men.

29Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife and quarrels? Who has complaints? Who has wounds without reason? Who has bloodshot eyes?

30Those who linger over wine; those who go in search of mixed wine.

31Do not look on wine when it reddens, when it sends its gleam into the cup, when it goes in even paths.

32In the end it bites like a snake and stings like a viper.

33Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things.

34You will be like one lying in the heart of the sea, or like one lying at the top of the mast.

35They struck me, but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I felt nothing. When will I awake? I will seek it yet again.