| 1 | My child, if you have given your pledge to your neighbor, if you have bound yourself to another, |
| 2 | you are snared by the utterance of your lips, caught by the words of your mouth. |
| 3 | So do this, my child, and save yourself, for you have come into your neighbor’s power: go, hurry, and plead with your neighbor. |
| 4 | Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber; |
| 5 | save yourself like a gazelle from the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler. |
| 6 | Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise. |
| 7 | Without having any chief or officer or ruler, |
| 8 | it prepares its food in summer, and gathers its sustenance in harvest. |
| 9 | How long will you lie there, O lazybones? When will you rise from your sleep? |
| 10 | A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, |
| 11 | and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want, like an armed warrior. |
| 12 | A scoundrel and a villain goes around with crooked speech, |
| 13 | winking the eyes, shuffling the feet, pointing the fingers, |
| 14 | with perverted mind devising evil, continually sowing discord; |
| 15 | on such a one calamity will descend suddenly; in a moment, damage beyond repair. |
| 16 | There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: |
| 17 | haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, |
| 18 | a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, |
| 19 | a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family. |
| 20 | My child, keep your father’s commandment, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. |
| 21 | Bind them upon your heart always; tie them around your neck. |
| 22 | When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you. |
| 23 | For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, |
| 24 | to preserve you from the wife of another, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. |
| 25 | Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes; |
| 26 | for a prostitute’s fee is only a loaf of bread, but the wife of another stalks a man’s very life. |
| 27 | Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one’s clothes? |
| 28 | Or can one walk on hot coals without scorching the feet? |
| 29 | So is he who sleeps with his neighbor’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished. |
| 30 | Thieves are not despised who steal only to satisfy their appetite when they are hungry. |
| 31 | Yet if they are caught, they will pay sevenfold; they will forfeit all the goods of their house. |
| 32 | But he who commits adultery has no sense; he who does it destroys himself. |
| 33 | He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. |
| 34 | For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he shows no restraint when he takes revenge. |
| 35 | He will accept no compensation, and refuses a bribe no matter how great. |