Proverbs - The Old Testament

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!'