1. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, Look well 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 that food is deceptive.
4. Do not labour to be rich. Cease from your own understanding!
5. Do you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle to the heavens.
6. Do not eat the bread of one having an evil eye, Nor desire his delicacies;
7. For as he reckons in his life, so is he. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, But his heart is not with you.
8. You vomit the piece you have eaten, And lose your sweet words.
9. Do not speak in the ears of a fool, For he treads on the wisdom of your words.
10. Do not move the ancient boundary, And do not enter the fields of the fatherless;
11. For their Redeemer is strong; He shall plead their cause against you.
12. Bring your heart to discipline, And your ears to words of knowledge.
13. Do not withhold discipline from a child; If you beat him with a rod, he does not die.
14. Beat him with a rod And deliver his being from the grave.
15. My son, if your heart shall be wise, My heart rejoices, even I,
16. And my kidneys exult When your lips speak what is straight.
17. Do not let your heart envy sinners, But be in the fear of יהוה all day long;
18. For certain, there is a hereafter, And let your expectancy not be cut off.
19. Hear, my son, and be wise, And guide your heart in the way.
20. Be not among heavy drinkers of wine Or with gluttonous eaters of meat;
21. For the drunkard and the glutton become poor, And slumber puts rags on a man.
22. Listen to your father who brought you forth, And do not despise your mother when she is old.
23. Buy the truth and do not sell it – Wisdom and discipline and understanding.
24. The father of the righteous greatly rejoices, And he who brings forth a wise one delights in him.
25. Let your father and your mother rejoice, And let her who bore you exult.
26. My son, give me your heart, And let your eyes watch my ways.
27. For a whore is a deep pit, And a strange woman is a narrow well.
28. She too lies in wait as for a prey, And increases the treacherous among men.
29. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who feels hurt without cause? Who has redness of eyes?
30. Those staying long at the wine, Those going in to search out mixed wine.
31. Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it gives its colour in the cup, As it flows smoothly;
32. In the end it bites like a snake, And stings like an adder –
33. Your eyes look on strange women, And your heart speaks perversities.
34. And you shall be as one Lying down in the midst of the sea, And as one lying at the top of the mast, saying,
35. “They smote me, I was not sick! They beat me, I did not know! When shall I wake up? Let me seek it again!”