Proverbs 22:13-29

¹³A slow man shall say, A lion is withoutforth; I shall be slain in the midst of the streets.

¹⁴The mouth of an alien woman is a deep ditch; he to whom the Lord is wroth shall fall into it.

¹⁵Folly is bound together in the heart of a child; and a rod of chastising or discipline shall drive it away.

¹⁶He that falsely challengeth a poor man, to increase his own riches, shall give to a richer man, and he shall be needy.

¹⁷My son, bow down thine ear, and hear thou the words of wise men; but set thou the heart to my teaching.

¹⁸That shall be fair to thee, when thou hast kept it in thine heart, and it shall flow again in thy lips.

¹⁹That thy trust be in the Lord; wherefore and I have showed it to thee today.

²⁰Lo! I have described it in three manners, in thoughts and knowing,

²¹that I should show to thee the firmness and speeches of truth; to answer of these things to them that sent thee.

²²Do thou not violence to a poor man, for he is poor; neither defoul thou a needy man in the gate.

²³For the Lord shall deem his cause, and he shall torment them that tormented his soul.

²⁴Do not thou be friend to a wrathful man, neither go thou with a wrathful man;

²⁵lest peradventure thou learn his ways, and take cause of stumbling to thy soul.

²⁶Do not thou be with them that fasten, or bind, their hands, and that proffer themselves to be borrows for debts;

²⁷for if he hath not whereof he shall restore, what of cause is, that thou take away covering from thy bed?

²⁸Go thou not over the eld marks or the old terms, or the boundary stones, which thy fathers have set.

²⁹Thou hast seen a man smart in his work; he shall stand before kings, and he shall not be before unnoble men.