¹When you sit down to eat with a ruler, discern carefully what is before your face.

²and you will set a knife to your throat, if you are a lord of being.

³Do not crave his delicacies, for it is food of lies.

⁴Do not toil to gain riches; from your own understanding, cease.

⁵Do you make your eyes fly onto it, and it is not there? For it will surely make itself wings, like an eagle that flies into the skies.

⁶Do not eat the food of one with an evil eye, and do not crave his delicacies.

⁷For as he has reckoned in his being, so he is. "Eat and drink," he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

⁸The morsel you ate you will vomit up, and you will spoil your lovely words.

⁹In the ears of a fool do not speak, for he will despise the insight of your words.

¹⁰Do not move the boundary of forever, and into the fields of the fatherless do not go.

¹¹For their redeemer is strong; he will argue their case against you.

¹²Bring your heart to discipline, and your ear to the words of knowledge.

¹³Do not hold back discipline from the youth; for if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

¹⁴You strike him with the rod, and you rescue his being from Sheol.

¹⁵My son, if your heart is wise, my heart will rejoice, even mine.

¹⁶And my kidneys will exult when your lips speak what is level.

¹⁷Do not let your heart be jealous of sinners, but rather be in the fear of Yahweh all the day.

¹⁸For surely there is a latter end, and your hope will not be cut off.

¹⁹Listen, you, my son, and be wise, and lead your heart on in the way.

²⁰Do not be among heavy drinkers of wine, among those who squander flesh for themselves.

²¹For the heavy drinker and the squanderer will be impoverished, and drowsiness will clothe them in rags.

²²Hear your father, the one who fathered you, and do not despise your mother when she has grown old.

²³Acquire stability and do not sell it: wisdom and discipline and understanding.

²⁴The father of a righteous one will surely rejoice, and one who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.

²⁵May your father and your mother be glad, and may she who bore you rejoice.

²⁶Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes keep my ways.

²⁷For a prostitute is a deep pit, and a foreign woman is a narrow well.

²⁸She too lies in wait as for prey, and she increases the treacherous among men.

²⁹To whom woe? To whom alas? To whom strife? To whom complaint? To whom wounds for nothing? To whom the dullness of eyes?

³⁰To those who delay over the wine, to those who go to search out mixed wine.

³¹Do not look at wine when it grows red, when it gives its sparkle in the cup, when it goes down evenly.

³²Its latter end bites like a snake, and like a viper it wounds.

³³Your eyes will see strange women, and your heart will speak perversities.

³⁴And you will be like one who lies down in the heart of the sea, and like one who lies down at the head of a mast.

³⁵"They struck me, I am not sick; they beat me, I did not know it. When will I wake? I will go on to seek it again."