### Douay Rheims Bible

Proverbs 22

## The Proverbs

Return to Index

| # 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?

Proverbs 24

Public Domain Software by johnhurt.com