1 When you sit to eat with a ruler, || Diligently consider that which [is] before you,10 Do not remove a border of ancient times, || And do not enter into fields of the fatherless,11 For their Redeemer [is] strong, || He pleads their cause with you.12 Bring your heart to instruction, || And your ear to sayings of knowledge.13 Do not withhold discipline from a youth, || When you strike him with a rod he does not die.14 You strike him with a rod, || And you deliver his soul from Sheol.15 My son, if your heart has been wise, || My heart rejoices, even mine,16 And my reins exult when your lips speak uprightly.17 Do not let your heart be envious at sinners, || But—in the fear of YHWH all the day.18 For is there a posterity? Then your hope is not cut off.19 Hear, my son, and be wise, || And make your heart blessed in the way,2 And you have put a knife to your throat, || If you [are] a man of appetite.20 Do not become drunk with wine, || Among gluttonous ones of flesh,21 For the drunkard and glutton become poor, || And drowsiness clothes with rags.22 Listen to your father, who begot you, || And do not despise your mother when she has become old.23 Buy truth, and do not sell, || Wisdom, and instruction, and understanding,24 The father of the righteous rejoices greatly, || The begetter of the wise rejoices in him.25 Your father and your mother rejoice, || Indeed, she bearing you is joyful.26 Give, my son, your heart to me, || And let your eyes watch my ways.27 For a harlot [is] a deep ditch, || And a strange woman [is] a narrow pit.28 She also, as catching prey, lies in wait, || And she increases the treacherous among men.29 Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaint? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes?3 Have no desire to his delicacies, seeing it [is] lying food.30 Those lingering by the wine, || Those going in to search out mixed wine.31 Do not see wine when it shows itself red, || When it gives its color in the cup, || It goes up and down through the upright.32 Its latter end—it bites as a serpent, || And it stings as a viper.33 Your eyes see strange women, || And your heart speaks perverse things.34 And you have been as one lying down in the heart of the sea, || And as one lying down on the top of a mast.35 “They struck me, I have not been sick, || They beat me, I have not known. When I awake—I seek it yet again!”4 Do not labor to make wealth, || Cease from your own understanding, || Do you cause your eyes to fly on it? Then it is not.5 For wealth makes wings to itself, || It flies to the heavens as an eagle.6 Do not eat the bread of an evil eye, || And have no desire to his delicacies,7 For as he has thought in his soul, so he [is]. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, || And his heart [is] not with you.8 You vomit up your morsel you have eaten, || And have marred your words that [are] sweet.9 Do not speak in the ears of a fool, || For he treads on the wisdom of your words.