Proverbs 23:1-14 ▼

1 When you sit down to eat with a ruler, discern carefully what is before your face,

2 and put a knife to your throat if you are an owner of an appetite.

3 You should not mark out his delicacies, for it is bread of lies.

4 Do not toil to become rich, cease from your own understanding.

5 Will you make your eyes fly onto it, and it is not there? For it certainly makes for itself wings like an eagle and flies away to the heavens!

6 Do not eat the bread of one evil of eye, and do not mark out his delicacies.

7 For like one who calculates in his soul, so is he—“Eat and drink,” he says to you, and his heart is not with you.

8 Your morsel that you have eaten, you will vomit it up, and you will ruin your pleasant words!

9 Do not speak in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.

10 Do not remove a boundary of old, and do not enter into the fields of the fatherless.

11 For their Redeemer is strong—He will contend their dispute against you.

12 You must bring your heart to discipline, and your ears to the words of knowledge.

13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

14 You strike him with the rod, and you will deliver his soul from Sheol.