1. When you sit to eat with a ruler, consider diligently 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 they are deceitful food.
4. Do not labor to be rich: cease from your own wisdom.
5. Will you set your eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
6. Do not eat the bread of him that has an evil eye, neither desire his choice foods:
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 which you have eaten you shall vomit up, and lose your sweet words.
9. Do not speak in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of your words.
10. Remove not the ancient landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
11. For their redeemer is mighty; he shall 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 shall not die.
14. You shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell.
15. My son, if your heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.
16. Yea, my inner being shall rejoice, when your lips speak right things.
17. Let not your heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.
18. For surely there is an end; and your expectation shall not be cut off.
19. Hear, my son, and be wise, and guide your 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. Obey the voice of your father that begot you, and despise not your 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 begets a wise child shall have joy from him.
25. Your father and your mother shall be glad, and she that bore you shall rejoice.
26. My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.
27. For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
28. She also lies in wait as for a prey, and increases the transgressors among men.
29. Who has woe? who has sorrow? who has contentions? who has babbling? who has wounds without cause? who has redness of eyes?
30. Those who remain long at the wine; those who go to seek mixed wine.
31. Do not look upon the wine when it is red, when it shows its color in the cup, when it moves itself pleasantly.
32. At the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder.
33. Your eyes shall behold strange women, and your heart shall speak perverse things.
34. Yea, you shall be as he that lies down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lies upon the top of a mast.
35. They have struck me, shall you 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.
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