The Proverbs
Chapter 23
1 – When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face.
2 – And put a knife to thy throat, if it be so that thou have thy soul in thy 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 thy prudence.
5 – Lift not up thy eyes to riches which thou canst 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 thinketh that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee.
8 – The meats which thou hadst eaten, thou shalt vomit up: and shalt loose thy beautiful words.
9 – Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of thy 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 thee.
12 – Let thy heart apply itself to instruction: and thy ears to words of knowledge.
13 – Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.
14 – Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.
15 – My son, if thy mind be wise, my heart shall rejoice with thee:
16 – And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak what is right.
17 – Let not thy heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long:
18 – Because thou shalt have hope in the latter end, and thy expectation shall not be taken away.
19 – Hear thou, my son, and be wise: and guide thy 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 thy father, that beget thee: and despise not thy mother when she is old.
23 – Buy truth, and do not sell wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
24 – The father of the just rejoiceth greatly: he that hath begotten a wise son, shall have joy in him.
25 – Let thy father, and thy mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore thee.
26 – My son, give me thy heart: and let thy eyes keep my ways.
27 – For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
28 – She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill.
29 – Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath 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 shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly,
32 – But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk.
33 – Thy eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things.
34 – And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep, when the stern is lost.
35 – And thou shalt 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?
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The Catholic Bible Online. Scriptures are from The Douay Rheims Catholic Bible 1582-1610 a.d. Version In the Public Domain. The Douay Rheims Bible is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English undertaken by members of the English College, Douai in the service of the Catholic Church.