Proverbs
6 My son, if you have gone surety for your fellowman,+ [if] you have given your handshake even to the stranger,+ 2 [if] you have been ensnared by the sayings of your mouth,+ [if] you have been caught by the sayings of your mouth, 3 take this action then, my son, and deliver yourself, for you have come into the palm of your fellowman:+ Go humble yourself* and storm your fellowman with importunities.+ 4 Do not give any sleep to your eyes, nor any slumber to your beaming eyes.+ 5 Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand and like a bird from the hand of the birdcatcher.+
6 Go to the ant,+ you lazy one;+ see its ways and become wise. 7 Although it has no commander, officer or ruler, 8 it prepares its food even in the summer;+ it has gathered its food supplies even in the harvest. 9 How long, you lazy one, will you keep lying down?+ When will you rise up from your sleep?+ 10 A little more sleep, a little more slumbering, a little more folding of the hands in lying down,+ 11 and your poverty will certainly come just like some rover,+ and your want like an armed man.*+
12 A good-for-nothing man,*+ a man of hurtfulness,* is walking with crookedness of speech,*+ 13 winking with his eye,+ making signs with his foot, making indications with his fingers.+ 14 Perverseness is in his heart.+ He is fabricating something bad all the time.+ He keeps sending out merely contentions.+ 15 That is why suddenly there will come his disaster;+ in an instant he will be broken, and there will be no healing.+
16 There are six things that Jehovah does hate;+ yes, seven are things detestable to his soul:+ 17 lofty eyes,+ a false tongue,+ and hands that are shedding innocent blood,+ 18 a heart fabricating hurtful schemes,+ feet that are in a hurry to run to badness,+ 19 a false witness that launches forth lies,+ and anyone sending forth contentions among brothers.+
20 Observe, O my son, the commandment of your father,+ and do not forsake the law of your mother.+ 21 Tie them* upon your heart constantly;+ bind them upon your throat.+ 22 When you walk about, it* will lead you;+ when you lie down, it will stand guard over you;+ and when you have waked up, it itself will make you its concern. 23 For the commandment is a lamp,+ and a light the law is,+ and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,+ 24 to guard you against the bad woman,*+ against the smoothness of the tongue of the foreign woman.+ 25 Do not desire her prettiness in your heart,+ and may she not take you with her lustrous eyes,+ 26 because in behalf of a woman prostitute [one comes down] to a round loaf of bread;+ but as regards another man’s wife, she hunts even for a precious soul.+ 27 Can a man rake together fire into his bosom and yet his very garments not be burned?+ 28 Or can a man walk upon the coals and his feet themselves not be scorched? 29 Likewise with anyone having relations with the wife of his fellowman,+ no one touching her will remain unpunishable.+ 30 People do not despise a thief just because he commits thievery to fill his soul when he is hungry. 31 But, when found, he will make it good with seven times as much; all the valuables of his house he will give.+ 32 Anyone committing adultery with a woman is in want of heart;*+ he that does it is bringing his own soul to ruin.*+ 33 A plague* and dishonor he will find,+ and his reproach itself will not be wiped out.+ 34 For the rage of an able-bodied man is jealousy,+ and he will not show compassion in the day of vengeance.+ 35 He will have no consideration for any sort of ransom, neither will he show willingness, no matter how large you make the present.