| 1 | When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face. |
| 2 | And put a knife to thy throat, if it be so that thou have thy soul in thy own power. |
| 3 | Be not desirous of his meats, in which is the bread of deceit. |
| 4 | Labour not to be rich: but set bounds to thy prudence. |
| 5 | Lift not up thy eyes to riches which thou canst not have: because they shall make themselves wings like those of an eagle, and shall fly towards heaven. |
| 6 | Eat not with an envious man, and desire not his meats: |
| 7 | Because like a soothsayer, and diviner, he thinketh that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee. |
| 8 | The meats which thou hadst eaten, thou shalt vomit up: and shalt loose thy beautiful words. |
| 9 | Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of thy speech. |
| 10 | Touch not the bounds of little ones: and enter not into the field of the fatherless: |
| 11 | For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee. |
| 12 | Let thy heart apply itself to instruction: and thy ears to words of knowledge. |
| 13 | Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. |
| 14 | Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell. |
| 15 | My son, if thy mind be wise, my heart shall rejoice with thee: |
| 16 | And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak what is right. |
| 17 | Let not thy heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long: |
| 18 | Because thou shalt have hope in the latter end, and thy expectation shall not be taken away. |
| 19 | Hear thou, my son, and be wise: and guide thy mind in the way. |
| 20 | Be not in the feasts of great drinkers, nor in their revellings, who contribute flesh to eat: |
| 21 | Because they that give themselves to drinking, and that club together shall be consumed; and drowsiness shall be clothed with rags. |
| 22 | Hearken to thy father, that beget thee: and despise not thy mother when she is old. |
| 23 | Buy truth, and do not sell wisdom, and instruction, and understanding. |
| 24 | The father of the just rejoiceth greatly: he that hath begotten a wise son, shall have joy in him. |
| 25 | Let thy father, and thy mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore thee. |
| 26 | My son, give me thy heart: and let thy eyes keep my ways. |
| 27 | For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit. |
| 28 | She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill. |
| 29 | Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? |
| 30 | Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink of their cups. |
| 31 | Look not upon the wine when it is yellow, when the colour thereof shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly, |
| 32 | But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk. |
| 33 | Thy eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things. |
| 34 | And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep, when the stern is lost. |
| 35 | And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain: they drew me, and I felt not: when shall I awake, and find wine again? |
