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 be a man given to appetite.

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

⁴ Labor not to be rich: cease from your own wisdom.

⁵ Will you set your eyes on that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

⁶ Eat you not the bread of him that has an evil eye, neither desire you his dainty meats:

⁷ For as he thinks in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, says he to you; but his heart is not with you.

⁸ The morsel which you have eaten shall you vomit up, and lose your sweet words.

⁹ Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of your 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 you.

¹² Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to the words of knowledge.

¹³ Withhold not 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 Yes, my reins shall rejoice, when your lips speak right things.

¹⁷ Let not your heart envy sinners: but be you 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 you, 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 Listen to your father that begat 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 of 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 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

³¹ Look not you on the wine when it is red, when it gives his color in the cup, when it moves itself aright.

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 utter perverse things.

³⁴ Yes, you shall be as he that lies down in the middle of the sea, or as he that lies on the top of a mast.

³⁵ They have stricken 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.