cormacburke.me.ke

Chapter 23
1 When you shall sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before your face.
2 And put a knife to your throat, if it be so that you have your soul in your 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 your prudence.
5 Lift not up your eyes to riches which you can 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 thinks that which he know not. Eat and drink, will he say to you: and his mind is not with you.
8 The meats which you had eaten, you shall vomit up: and shall loose your beautiful words.
9 Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of your 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 you.
12 Let your heart apply itself to instruction: and your ears to words of knowledge.
13 Withhold not correction from a child: for if you strike him with the rod, he shall not die.
14 You shall beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.
15 My son, if your mind be wise, my heart shall rejoice with you:
16 And my reins shall rejoice, when your lips shall speak what is right.
17 Let not your heart envy sinners: but be in the fear of the Lord all the day long:
18 Because you shall have hope in the latter end, and your expectation shall not be taken away.
19 Hear you, my son, and be wise: and guide your 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 your father, that beget you: and despise not your mother when she is old.
23 Buy truth, and do not sell wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
24 The father of the just rejoices greatly: he that has begotten a wise son, shall have joy in him.
25 Let your father, and your mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore you.
26 My son, give me your heart: and let your eyes keep my ways.
27 For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
28 She lies in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill.
29 Who has woe? whose father has woe? who has contentions? who falls into pits? who has wounds without cause? who has redness of eyes?
30 Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink of their cups.
31 Look not upon the wine when it is yellow, when the colour thereof shines in the glass: it goes in pleasantly,
32 But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk.
33 your eyes shall behold strange women, and your heart shall utter perverse things.
34 And you shall be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep, when the stern is lost.
35 And you shall 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?