Proverbs, 23

1. If you take your seat at a great man's table, take careful note of what you have before you;

2. if you have a big appetite put a knife to your throat.

3. Do not hanker for his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.

4. Do not wear yourself out in quest of wealth, stop applying your mind to this.

5. Fix your gaze on it, and it is there no longer, for it is able to sprout wings like an eagle that flies off to the sky.

6. Do not eat the food of anyone whose eye is jealous, do not hanker for his delicacies.

7. For what he is really thinking about is himself: 'Eat and drink,' he tells you, but his heart is not with you.

8. You will spit out whatever you have eaten and find your compliments wasted.

9. Do not waste words on a fool, who will not appreciate the shrewdness of your remarks.

10. Do not displace the ancient boundary-stone, or encroach on orphans' lands,

11. for they have a powerful avenger, and he will take up their cause against you.

12. Apply your heart to discipline, and your ears to instructive sayings.

13. Do not be chary of correcting a child, a stroke of the cane is not likely to be fatal.

14. Give him a stroke of the cane, you will save his soul from Sheol.

15. My child, if your heart is wise, then my own heart is glad,

16. and my inmost self rejoices when from your lips come honest words.

17. Do not let your heart be envious of sinners but remain steady every day in the fear of Yahweh;

18. for there is a future, and your hope will not come to nothing.

19. Listen, my child, and be wise, and guide your heart in the way.

20. Do not be one of those forever tippling wine nor one of those who gorge themselves with meat;

21. for the drunkard and glutton impoverish themselves, and sleepiness is clothed in rags.

22. Listen to your father from whom you are sprung, do not despise your mother in her old age.

23. Purchase truth -- never sell it-wisdom, discipline, and discernment.

24. The father of the upright will rejoice indeed, he who fathers a wise child will have joy of it.

25. Your father and mother will be happy, and she who bore you joyful.

26. My child, pay attention to me, let your eyes take pleasure in my way:

27. a prostitute is a deep pit, a narrow well, the woman who belongs to another.

28. Yes, like a brigand, she lies in wait, increasing the number of law-breakers.

29. For whom is pity, for whom contempt, for whom is strife, for whom complaint, for whom blows struck at random, for whom the clouded eye?

30. For those who linger over wine too long, ever on the look-out for the blended liquors.

31. Do not gaze at wine, how red it is, how it sparkles in the cup! How smoothly it slips down the throat!

32. In the end its bite is like a serpent's, its sting as sharp as an adder's.

33. Your eyes will see peculiar things, you will talk nonsense from your heart.

34. You will be like someone sleeping in mid-ocean, like one asleep at the mast-head.

35. 'Struck me, have they? But I'm not hurt. Beaten me? I don't feel anything. When shall I wake up? . . I'll ask for more of it!'