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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 lose 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 begot 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 off 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?