Proverbs 6:6-30

⁶Look at the ant, you lazy person, consider her ways, and be wise.

⁷It has no commander, officer, or ruler,

⁸yet it prepares its food in the summer and during the harvest it stores up what it will eat.

⁹How long will you sleep, you lazy person? When will you rise from your sleep?

¹⁰“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest”—

¹¹and your poverty will come like a robber and your needs like an armed soldier.

¹²A worthless person—a wicked man— lives by the crookedness of his speech,

¹³winking his eyes, making signals with his feet and pointing with his fingers.

¹⁴He plots evil with deceit in his heart; he always stirs up discord.

¹⁵Therefore his disaster will overtake him in an instant; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.

¹⁶There are six things that Yahweh hates, seven that are disgusting to him.

¹⁷The eyes of a proud person, a tongue that lies, hands that shed the blood of innocent people,

¹⁸a heart that invents wicked schemes, feet that quickly run to do evil,

¹⁹a witness who breathes out lies and one who sows discord among brothers.

²⁰My son, obey the command of your father and do not forsake the teaching of your mother.

²¹Always bind them on your heart; tie them about your neck.

²²When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; and when you wake up, they will teach you.

²³For the commands are a lamp, and the teaching is a light; the corrections that come by instruction are the way of life.

²⁴It keeps you from the immoral woman, from the smooth words of an immoral woman.

²⁵Do not lust in your heart after her beauty and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes.

²⁶Sleeping with a prostitute can cost the price of a loaf of bread, but the wife of another may cost you your very life.

²⁷Can a man carry a fire against his chest without burning his clothes?

²⁸Can a man walk on hot coals without scorching his feet?

²⁹So is the man who sleeps with his neighbor's wife; the one who sleeps with her will not go unpunished.

³⁰People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his need when he is hungry.