1When you sit to eat with a ruler, discern well what is before you,
2and you shall put a knife to your throat, if you are a possessor of soul (nephesh).
3Do not crave his delicacies, for they are bread of lies.
4Do not weary yourself to grow rich; cease from your own understanding.
5Will you let your eyes fly upon it? And it is gone; for it surely makes for itself wings, like an eagle it flies to the heavens.
6Do not eat the bread of one evil of eye, and do not crave his delicacies;
7for as he reckons in his soul (nephesh), so is he. "Eat and drink," he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
8Your morsel that you have eaten, you will vomit it up, and you will waste your pleasant words.
9In the ears of a fool do not speak, for he will despise the prudence of your words.
10Do not move back an ancient boundary, and into the fields of the fatherless do not enter;
11for their Redeemer is strong; He Himself will contend their contention with you.
12Bring your heart to instruction, and your ears to the sayings of knowledge.
13Do not withhold instruction from a youth; for if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.
14You shall strike him with the rod, and his soul (nephesh) from Sheol you shall deliver.
15My son, if your heart is wise, my heart will rejoice, even I myself;
16and my kidneys will exult, when your lips speak uprightness.
17Let not your heart envy sinners, but rather be in the fear of YHWH all the day;
18for surely there is a latter end, and your hope will not be cut off.
19Hear, you, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way.
20Do not be among drinkers of wine, among gluttonous eaters of meat (basar) for themselves;
21for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe one with rags.
22Listen to your father, this one who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
23Buy truth, and do not sell it; wisdom and instruction and understanding.
24The father of a righteous one will surely rejoice; and one who begets a wise one will be glad in him.
25Let your father and your mother rejoice, and let her who bore you be glad.
26Give, my son, your heart to me, and let your eyes guard my ways.
27For a harlot is a deep pit, and a foreign woman is a narrow well.
28Indeed she, like a robber, lies in wait, and she increases the treacherous among men (adam).
29For whom is woe? For whom is sorrow? For whom are contentions? For whom is complaint? For whom are wounds without cause? For whom is dullness of eyes?
30For those who linger over the wine, for those who come to search out mixed wine.
31Do not look at wine when it reddens, when it gives its eye in the cup, when it goes down smoothly.
32In its latter end, like a serpent it bites, and like an adder it stings.
33Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will speak perverse things.
34And you will be like one lying down in the heart of the sea, and like one lying at the top of a mast.
35"They struck me, but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not know it. When will I awake? I will seek it yet again."