If they say—“Come with us!
Let’s set an ambush and kill someone.
Let’s attack some innocent person just for fun!

rescuing you from the way of evil—
from the one who says perverse things,

Don’t say to your neighbor, “Go away! Come back later.
I’ll give it tomorrow”—when it is there with you.

and you will say, “How I hated discipline,
and how my heart despised correction.

Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
and call understanding your relative.

She grabs him and kisses him;
she brazenly says to him,

Listen, for I speak of noble things,
and what my lips say is right.

“Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!”
To the one who lacks sense, she says,

“Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!”
To the one who lacks sense, she says,

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure;
I am cleansed from my sin”?

“It’s worthless, it’s worthless!” the buyer says,
but after he is on his way, he gloats.

Don’t say, “I will avenge this evil!”
Wait on the Lord, and He will rescue you.

The slacker says, “There’s a lion outside!
I’ll be killed in the public square!”

for it’s like someone calculating inwardly.
“Eat and drink,” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.

My innermost being will cheer
when your lips say what is right.

Your eyes will see strange things,
and you will say absurd things.

If you say, “But we didn’t know about this,”
won’t He who weighs hearts consider it?
Won’t He who protects your life know?
Won’t He repay a person according to his work?

Whoever says to the guilty, “You are innocent”—
people will curse him, and tribes will denounce him;

Don’t say, “I’ll do to him what he did to me;
I’ll repay the man for what he has done.”

for it is better for him to say to you, “Come up here!”
than to demote you in plain view of a noble.

The slacker says, “There’s a lion in the road—
a lion in the public square!”

so is the man who deceives his neighbor
and says, “I was only joking!”

The one who robs his father or mother
and says, “That’s no sin,”
is a companion to a man who destroys.

The leech has two daughters: “Give, Give!”
Three things are never satisfied;
four never say, “Enough!”:

Sheol; a childless womb;
earth, which is never satisfied with water;
and fire, which never says, “Enough!”

This is the way of an adulteress:
she eats and wipes her mouth
and says, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

What should I say, my son?
What, son of my womb?
What, son of my vows?