Chapter 23

When thou shalt sit to eat with a Prince, attend diligently what things are set before thy face:

and set a knife in thy throat, if notwithstanding thou have thy soul in thine own power.

Desire not his meats, in which is the breath of lying.

Labour not to be rich: but set a mean to thy prudence.

Lift not up thine eyes to the riches, which thou canst not have: because they shall make to themselves wings as of an eagle, and shall fly into heaven.

Eat not with an envious man, and desire not his meats.

Because after the similitude of a soothsayer, and diviner, he esteemeth that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee.

The meats which thou hadst eaten thou shalt vomit up: and shalt lose thy beautiful words.

Speak not in the ears of the unwise: because they will despise the doctrine of thy speech.

Touch not the bounds of little ones: and into the field of pupils enter not.

For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee.

Let thy heart enter into doctrine: and thine ears to words of knowledge.

Withdraw not discipline from a child: for if thou shalt strike him with the rod, he shall not die.

Thou shalt strike him with the rod: and deliver his soul from hell.

My son, if thy mind shall be wise, my heart shall be glad with thee:

And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak right things.

Let not thy heart envy sinners: but in the fear of our Lord be thou all the day:

because thou shalt have hope in the later end, and thine exaltation shall not be taken away.

Hear my son, & be wise: & direct thy mind in the way.

Be not in the feasts of great drinkers, nor in their comessations, which contribute flesh together to eat:

because they that are given to drinking, and that pay shots, shall be consumed, and drowsiness shall be clothed with rags.

Hear thy father, that begot thee: and contemn not thy mother when she is old.

Buy truth, and sell not wisdom, and doctrine, and intelligence.

The father of the just rejoiceth with gladness: he that hath begotten a wiseman, shall rejoice in him.

Let thy father be glad and thy mother, and let her rejoice that bare thee.

My son give me thy heart: & let thine eyes keep my ways.

For an harlot is a deep ditch: & a strange woman a narrow pit.

She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and whom she shall see not circumspect, she will kill.

To whom is woe? To whose father woe? To whom brawls? To whom ditches? To whom wounds without cause? To whom blood- shedding eyes?

Is it not to them that pass their time in wine, and study to drink out their cups?

Behold not wine when it waxeth yellow, when the colour thereof shall shine in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly,

but in the end, it will bite like a snake, and as a basilisk it will pour abroad poisons.

Thine eyes shall see strange women, and thy heart shall speak perverse things.

And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as the governor fast asleep, the stern being lost.

And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not grieved: they drew me, and I felt not: When shall I awake, and find wines again?