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CHAPTER 23
1 When thou sittest to eat with the prince, perceive thou diligently what things be set before thy face,
2 and set thou a coulter in thy throat. If nevertheless thou hast power on thy soul,
3 desire thou not of his meats, in whom is the bread of lying.
4 Do not thou travail to be made rich, but set thou measure to thy prudence.
5 Raise not thine eyes to riches, which thou mayest not have; for those [or they] shall make to them-selves pens or wings, as of an eagle, and they shall fly into heaven.
6 Eat thou not with an envious man, and desire thou not his meats;
7 for at the likeness of a false diviner, and of a conjecturer, that is, expounder of dreams, he guesseth that, that he knoweth not. He shall say to thee, Eat thou and drink; and his soul is not with thee.
8 Thou shalt spew out the meat, which thou hast eaten; and thou shalt lose thy fair words.
9 Speak thou not in the ears of unwise men; for they shall despise the teaching of thy speech.
10 Touch thou not the terms, or the boundary stones, of little children; and enter thou not into the field of fatherless and motherless children.
11 For the neighbour of them is strong, and he shall deem their cause against thee.
12 Thine heart enter to teaching, and thine ears to the words of knowing.
13 Do not thou withdraw chastising or discipline, from a child; for though thou smitest him with a rod, he shall not die.
14 Thou shalt smite him with a rod, and thou shalt deliver his soul from hell.
15 My son, if thy soul is wise, mine heart shall have joy with thee;
16 and my reins shall make full out joy, when thy lips speak rightful [or right] things.
17 Thine heart pursue [or follow] not sinners; but be thou in the dread of the Lord all day.
18 For thou shalt have hope at the last, and thine abiding shall not be done away.
19 My son, hear thou, and be wise, and address thy soul in the way.
20 Do not thou be in the feasts of drinkers, neither in the oft eatings of them, that bring together fleshes to eat.
21 For men giving attention to drinks, and giving morsels together, shall be wasted, and napping shall be clothed with clothes rent.
22 Hear thy father, that begat thee; and despise not thy mother, when she is eld.
23 Buy thou truth, and do not thou sell wisdom, and doctrine, and understanding.
24 The father of a just [or rightwise] man joyeth full out with joy; he that begat a wise man, shall be glad in him.
25 Thy father and thy mother have joy, and he that begat thee, make full out joy.
26 My son, give thine heart to me, and thine eyes keep my ways.
27 For a whore is a deep ditch, and an alien woman, is a strait pit.
28 She setteth ambush in the way, as a thief; and shall add despisers in men, that is, shall multiply despisers of God among men.
29 To whom is woe? to whose father is woe? to whom be chidings? to whom be ditches? to whom be wounds without cause? to whom is putting out of eyes?
30 Whether not to them, that dwell in wine, and study to drink [up] all of cups?
31 Behold thou not [the] wine, when it sparkleth, when the colour thereof shineth in a glass cup. It entereth sweetly,
32 but at the last it shall bite as an adder, and as a cockatrice it shall shed abroad venoms.
33 Thine eyes shall see strange women, and thy heart shall speak wayward things.
34 And thou shalt be as a man sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a governor asleeped [or sleeping], when the steering, either the instrument of governance, is lost.
35 And thou shalt say, They beat me, but I had not sorrow; they drew me, and I feeled not; when shall I wake out, and I shall find wines again?

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© 2001,2010,2011,2012,2013,2015 Terry Noble