1 My son, if you are surety for your friend, if you have struck your hands with a stranger,
2 you are snared with the words of your mouth; you are captured with the words of your mouth.
3 My son, do this then, and deliver yourself when you come into the hand of your friend: go humble yourself and entreat your friend.
4 Do not give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids.
5 Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise;
7 who, having no commander, overseer or ruler,
8 provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.
9 How long will you rest, O sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest;
11 so shall your poverty come as one walking, and your need like an armed man.
12 A worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth,
13 winking with his eyes, speaking with his feet, pointing with his fingers.
14 Perversity is in his heart, he devises evil all the time, he spreads strife.
15 Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly; he shall be broken in an instant without remedy.
16 These six things Jehovah hates; yea, seven are an abomination to his soul:
17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises evil plans, feet hurrying to run to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes lies, and he who spreads strife among brothers.
20 My son, keep your fathers commands, and do not forsake the instruction of your mother.
21 Bind them perpetually to your heart; tie them around your neck.
22 When you go, it shall lead you; when you sleep, it shall watch over you; and when you awake, it will speak with you.
23 For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life,
24 to keep you from the evil woman, from the seductiveness of the foreign tongue.
25 Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, and do not let her captivate you with her eyelids.
26 For on account of a promiscuous woman, a man comes to a loaf of bread; for the mans wife hunts for the precious soul.
27 Can a man take fire into his bosom and his clothes not be burned?
28 Or can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?
29 So is he who goes in to his neighbors wife; whoever touches her shall not be innocent.
30 They do not despise a thief, if he steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.
31 But if he is found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the wealth of his house.
32 He who commits adultery with a woman lacks heart; he who does so destroys his own soul.
33 Wounds and dishonor shall befall him, and his reproach shall not be wiped away.
34 For jealousy is the rage of a man, and he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
35 He will not regard any bribes, nor will he yield to the giving of many gifts.