Proverbs 23
The full text of Proverbs 23 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
1 When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
2 and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
3 Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.
4 Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
5 When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.
6 Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
7 for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
'Eat and drink!' he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
8 You will vomit up the morsel that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.
9 Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
for he will despise the good sense of your words.
10 Do not move an ancient landmark
or enter the fields of the fatherless,
11 for their Redeemer is strong;
he will plead their cause against you.
12 Apply your heart to instruction
and your ear to words of knowledge.
13 Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
14 If you strike him with the rod,
you will save his soul from Sheol.
15 My son, if your heart is wise,
my heart too will be glad.
16 My inmost being will exult
when your lips speak what is right.
17 Let not your heart envy sinners,
but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day.
18 Surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
19 Hear, my son, and be wise,
and direct your heart in the way.
20 Be not among drunkards
or among gluttonous eaters of meat,
21 for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty,
and slumber will clothe them with rags.
22 Listen to your father who gave you life,
and do not despise your mother when she is old.
23 Buy truth, and do not sell it;
buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.
24 The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice;
he who fathers a wise child will be glad in him.
25 Let your father and mother be glad;
let her who bore you rejoice.
26 My son, give me your heart,
and let your eyes observe my ways.
27 For a prostitute is a deep pit;
an adulteress is a narrow well.
28 She lies in wait like a robber
and increases the traitors among mankind.
29 Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?
30 Those who tarry long over wine;
those who go to try mixed wine.
31 Do not look at wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup
and goes down smoothly.
32 In the end it bites like a serpent
and stings like an adder.
33 Your eyes will see strange things,
and your heart utter perverse things.
34 You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea,
like one who lies on the top of a mast.
35 'They struck me,' you will say, 'but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I must have another drink.'
Translation notes (9)
- Proverbs 23:1a This admonition parallels ancient Near Eastern court etiquette literature, notably the Egyptian Instruction of Ptahhotep, which likewise counsels restraint at a superior's table. The Hebrew asher lefanekha, 'what is before you', is ambiguous and can also be read as 'who is before you', a caution to weigh the ruler himself as much as the food he serves.
- Proverbs 23:2a The knife is a hyperbolic image of severe self-restraint, not a literal act. Hebrew loa', 'gullet', occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible, and ba'al nefesh, literally 'a master of appetite', denotes one governed by craving, since nefesh can mean the throat and its hunger as well as the soul.
- Proverbs 23:7a The verb sha'ar (שָׁעַר), 'to calculate' or 'to estimate', occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible, and the clause is notoriously obscure. The King James tradition understood it as 'as he thinketh in his heart, so is he'. The Septuagint instead reads 'like one who swallows a hair', apparently taking the same consonants as se'ar, 'hair'.
- Proverbs 23:11a Go'el (גֹּאֵל), 'Redeemer', designates the kinsman charged under Israelite law with defending a relative's rights, redeeming property, and avenging wrongs (Leviticus 25:25; Numbers 35:19). Here God himself assumes that office for the fatherless, who lack a human protector. The verb yariv, 'he will plead', is courtroom language: he will prosecute their lawsuit against the encroacher.
- Proverbs 23:13a The Hebrew lo yamut, literally 'he will not die', is read by some as a plain assurance that measured discipline causes no harm, and by others as anticipating the next verse: the disciplined child will not die prematurely but be delivered from Sheol. The parallel with verse 14 favors the latter sense, though the translation preserves the ambiguity of the Hebrew. Musar means 'discipline' or 'correction'.
- Proverbs 23:20a The pairing of sove yayin, 'drinkers of wine', with zolele vasar, 'gluttonous eaters of meat', echoes Deuteronomy 21:20, where the rebellious son is denounced before the elders as zolel vesove, 'a glutton and a drunkard'. The proverb thus recalls the legal tradition's severest charge against a wayward son, fitting the address to 'my son' in the preceding verse.
- Proverbs 23:27a Hebrew pairs shuchah, 'pit', with be'er, 'well', turning an image of life-giving water into one of entrapment; a narrow well permits no climbing out. The word rendered 'adulteress' is nokhriyyah, literally 'foreign woman', the strange woman of Proverbs who stands outside the covenant household.
- Proverbs 23:31a The clause rendered here as 'sparkles in the cup' is literally 'when it gives its eye in the cup', where 'ayin, 'eye' (עַיִן), denotes the wine's gleam or color, an idiom found also in descriptions of gemstones (Ezekiel 1:16). The final line, yithallek bemeysharim, is literally 'it goes about in smoothness', describing how easily the wine slips down.
- Proverbs 23:34a Chibbel (חִבֵּל) occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible; its connection to chevel, 'rope', suggests some part of a ship's rigging, and 'mast' is a traditional inference from the context. The Septuagint departs from the image entirely, comparing the drunkard to a pilot in a great storm.
About this translation
The Trinity Bible Version (TBV) is Trinity Bible's own modern English translation, worked directly from the original Hebrew and honest to the earliest manuscripts. It was completed in 2026 — the most modern English Bible translation — and is exclusive to Trinity Bible. Every chapter, including all of Proverbs, is free to read here on the web.
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