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📚✭When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
carefully consider what✭ is
before you,
2 📚And put a knife to your throat,
if you are a man given
to appetite.
3 📚Do not desire his delicacies,
for it is deceptive food.
4 📚Do not wear yourself out
to get rich.
Cease from your own wisdom.
5 📚Will you set your eyes on it?
It is no longer there,
for surely riches make wings
for themselves;
they fly away✭ like an eagle in the sky.
6 📚✭Do not eat the food of him whose
eye is evil,
or desire his delicacies.
7 📚✭For as he thinks in his heart,
so is he. “Eat and drink”,
he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
8 The morsel you have eaten
you will vomit up,
and waste your compliments.
9 📚Do not speak in the ears of a fool,
for he will despise the wisdom
of your words.
10 📚✭Do not remove the ancient
boundary stone and encroach
on the fields of the fatherless,
11 📚For their redeemer is mighty.
He will plead their cause with you.
12 📚Apply your heart to instruction,
and your ears to the words of knowledge.
13 📚Do not withhold correction
from the child; for if you beat him
with the rod, he will not die.
14 📚You beat him with the rod,
and rescue his soul from hell.
15 📚✭My son, if your heart is wise,
my own heart too will rejoice.
16 📚Yes, my inmost being will rejoice
when your lips speak right things.
17 📚Do not let your heart envy✭ sinners,
but be in the fear✭ of the LORD
all day long.
18 📚For surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
19 📚✭Listen, my son, and be wise,
and guide your heart in the way.
20 📚Do not be with those
who drink too much wine,
with those who are gluttons in eating meat,
21 📚For the drunkard and the glutton
will come to poverty,
and drowsiness will clothe
a person with rags.
22 📚✭Listen to your father who begot you,
and do not despise your mother
when she is old.
23 📚Buy the truth and do not sell it,
also wisdom and instruction
and understanding.
24 📚The father of the righteous
will greatly rejoice,
and he who begets a wise child
will have joy in him.
25 📚Your father and your mother
will be glad,
and she who gave you birth will rejoice.
26 📚My son, give me your heart✭,
and keep your eyes on my ways.
27 📚For a prostitute is
a deep ditch,
and an adulteress is
a narrow pit.
28 📚She also lies in wait like a robber,
and increases the transgressors
among men.
29 📚✭Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has babbling?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?
30 📚Those who linger long at the wine,
those who go in search of mixed wine.
31 📚Do not look at the wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup,
when it goes down smoothly.
32 📚At last it will bite like a serpent,
and sting like a viper.
33 📚Your eyes will see strange things
and your mind will utter perverse things.
34 📚Yes, you will be like one lying down
in the middle of the sea,
or like one who lies down on the top of a mast.
35 📚“They hit me”,
you will say, “but I am not hurt!
They have beaten me,
but I didn’t feel it!
When will I wake up?
I will look for another drink”.