Proverbs 23

1 When thou sittest to eat with the prince, perceive thou diligently what things be set before thy face,⋮

2 and set thou a coulter in thy throat. If nevertheless thou hast power on thy soul,⋮

3 desire thou not of his meats, in whom is the bread of lying.⋮

4 Do not thou travail to be made rich, but set thou measure to thy prudence.⋮

5 Raise not thine eyes to riches, which thou mayest not have; for those or they shall make to them-selves pens or wings, as of an eagle, and they shall fly into heaven.⋮

6 Eat thou not with an envious man, and desire thou not his meats;⋮

7 for at the likeness of a false diviner, and of a conjecturer, that is, expounder of dreams, he guesseth that, that he knoweth not. He shall say to thee, Eat thou and drink; and his soul is not with thee.⋮

8 Thou shalt spew out the meat, which thou hast eaten; and thou shalt lose thy fair words.⋮

9 Speak thou not in the ears of unwise men; for they shall despise the teaching of thy speech.⋮

10 Touch thou not the terms, or the boundary stones, of little children; and enter thou not into the field of fatherless and motherless children.⋮

11 For the neighbour of them is strong, and he shall deem their cause against thee.⋮

12 Thine heart enter to teaching, and thine ears to the words of knowing.⋮

13 Do not thou withdraw chastising or discipline, from a child; for though thou smitest him with a rod, he shall not die.⋮

14 Thou shalt smite him with a rod, and thou shalt deliver his soul from hell.⋮

15 My son, if thy soul is wise, mine heart shall have joy with thee;⋮

16 and my reins shall make full out joy, when thy lips speak rightful or right things.⋮

17 Thine heart pursue or follow not sinners; but be thou in the dread of the Lord all day.⋮

18 For thou shalt have hope at the last, and thine abiding shall not be done away.⋮

19 My son, hear thou, and be wise, and address thy soul in the way.⋮

20 Do not thou be in the feasts of drinkers, neither in the oft eatings of them, that bring together fleshes to eat.⋮

21 For men giving attention to drinks, and giving morsels together, shall be wasted, and napping shall be clothed with clothes rent.⋮

22 Hear thy father, that begat thee; and despise not thy mother, when she is eld.⋮

23 Buy thou truth, and do not thou sell wisdom, and doctrine, and understanding.⋮

24 The father of a just or rightwise man joyeth full out with joy; he that begat a wise man, shall be glad in him.⋮

25 Thy father and thy mother have joy, and he that begat thee, make full out joy.⋮

26 My son, give thine heart to me, and thine eyes keep my ways.⋮

27 For a whore is a deep ditch, and an alien woman, is a strait pit.⋮

28 She setteth ambush in the way, as a thief; and shall add despisers in men, that is, shall multiply despisers of God among men.⋮

29 To whom is woe? to whose father is woe? to whom be chidings? to whom be ditches? to whom be wounds without cause? to whom is putting out of eyes?⋮

30 Whether not to them, that dwell in wine, and study to drink up all of cups?⋮

31 Behold thou not the wine, when it sparkleth, when the colour thereof shineth in a glass cup. It entereth sweetly,⋮

32 but at the last it shall bite as an adder, and as a cockatrice it shall shed abroad venoms.⋮

33 Thine eyes shall see strange women, and thy heart shall speak wayward things.⋮

34 And thou shalt be as a man sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a governor asleeped or sleeping, when the steering, either the instrument of governance, is lost.⋮

35 And thou shalt say, They beat me, but I had not sorrow; they drew me, and I feeled not; when shall I wake out, and I shall find wines again?⋮