Proverbs 23

1✦When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:

2✦And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.

3✦Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

4✦Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.

5✦Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

6✦Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats:

7✦For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

8The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words.

9✦Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.

10✦Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:

11✦For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.

12✦Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.

13✦Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.

14✦Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

15✦My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.

16✦Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.

17✦Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.

18✦For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.

19✦Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.

20✦Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:

21✦For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

22✦Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.

23✦Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.

24✦The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.

25✦Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.

26✦My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.

27✦For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.

28✦She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.

29✦Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

30✦They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

31✦Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

32✦At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

33✦Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

34✦Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.

35✦They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.