True Riches
(1 Timothy 6:17–19; James 5:1–6)

Saying 7

1When you sit down to eat with a ruler,

discern carefully what is before your face,†

2and put a knife to your throat

if you are an owner of an appetite.

3You should not mark out his delicacies,

for it is bread of lies.

Saying 8

4Do not toil to become rich,

cease from your own understanding.

5Will you make your eyes fly onto it, and it is not there?

For it certainly makes for itself wings like an eagle

and flies away to the heavens!

Saying 9

6Do not eat the bread of one evil of eye,†

and do not mark out his delicacies.

7For like one who calculates in his soul,

so is he—

“Eat and drink,” he says to you,

and his heart is not with you.

8Your morsel that you have eaten, you will vomit it up,

and you will ruin your pleasant words!

Saying 10

9Do not speak in the ears of a fool,

for he will despise the wisdom of your words.

Saying 11

10Do not remove a boundary of old,

and do not enter into the fields of the fatherless.

11For their Redeemer is strong—

He will contend their dispute against you.

Saying 12

12You must bring your heart to discipline,

and your ears to the words of knowledge.

Saying 13

13Do not withhold discipline from a child;

if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

14You strike him with the rod,

and you will deliver his soul from Sheol.

Saying 14

15My son, if your heart is wise,

my heart will be glad—even I.

16And my kidneys will exult

at the speaking of uprightness by your lips.

Saying 15

17Do not let your heart be jealous of the sinners,

but rather in the fear of YHWH all the day.

18For surely there is a posterity,

and your hope will not be cut off.

Saying 16

19Listen you, my son, and be wise,

and let your heart walk straight in the way.

20Not Be among those getting drunk on wine,

among those being gluttons of flesh to themelves.

21For the drunkard and the glutton will be dispossessed,

and drowsiness will clothe them in rags.

Saying 17

22Listen to your father, this one begot you,

and do not despise your mother when she is old.

Acquire truth and do not sell it—

wisdom, and discipline, and discernment.

24The father of a righteous one will greatly rejoice,

and the one begetting a wise son will be glad in him.

25Let your father and your mother be glad,

and let she who bore you rejoice.

Saying 18

26My son, give your heart to me,

and let your eyes delight in my ways.

27For a prostitute is a deep pit,

and a strange woman† is a narrow well.

28She also, like a robber, lies in wait,

and she increases the treacherous ones among men.

Saying 19

29To whom is woe? To whom is sorrow?

To whom are quarrels? To whom is complaining?

To whom are wounds without cause? To whom is dullness of eyes?

30To those lingering over the wine,

to those going in search of mixed drink!

31Do not look at the wine when it is red,

when it gives forth its eye in the cup—

it goes down with smoothness!

32Its end is like a serpent—it bites,

and like a viper it stings.

33Your eyes will see strange things,

and your heart will speak perverse things.

34And you will become like one lying down in the heart of the sea,

and like one lying down on the top of a mast:

35“They struck me; I did not become weak.

They beat me; I did not know it.

When I awake,

I will add to seek it again?”