What does Proverbs Chapter 23 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Opening sayings preserve their words and attribution. Images and reported speech remain distinct from added interpretation. Future and conditional assertions retain their scope in the closing sayings.

Chapter breakdown

Proverbs 23 commands diligent attention to food when sitting with prince and knife-to-throat wording conditional on soul in own power; do not desire deceit-bread meats. No particular host’s entrapment scheme or universal gluttony interpretation is supplied. Do not labor to be rich, bound prudence; unobtainable riches shall wing like eagle heavenward. Avoid envious host meats: he thinks unknown things like soothsayer/diviner, invites eating/drinking with mind absent. Eaten meats shall be vomited and beautiful words lost. Do not speak to fools despising instruction. Do not touch little ones’ bounds or fatherless fields: near kinsman strong and will judge cause. Local span does not identify him as God or supply Goel terminology.

Apply heart/ears to instruction/knowledge. Do not withhold child correction; if rod striking he shall not die; rod and hell-delivery statements remain attributed teachings, not a clinical safety claim. If son mind wise speaker heart shall rejoice, reins when right lips. Do not envy sinners, fear Lord all day, for latter hope and retained expectation. Hear and guide mind. Avoid drinker feasts and flesh-contributing revelries; drinking/clubbing shall consume, drowsiness clothed rags. Hear father, do not despise old mother; buy truth, do not sell wisdom/instruction/understanding. Just father rejoices, wise son father shall joy; let both parents rejoice. Give heart and eyes keep ways.

Harlot deep ditch, strange woman narrow pit, robber-like waiting shall kill unwary. Questions list woe, father’s woe, contentions, pits, causeless wounds and red eyes among wine-tarrying cup drinkers. Avoid yellow wine shining in glass, pleasant entering but later snake bite and basilisk poison. Eyes shall see strange women, heart utter perversity, like sleep amid sea or pilot asleep when stern lost. Future speech says beaten without pain sensation and drawn without feeling, asking when awake and find wine again. No clinical addiction stages, hallucination diagnosis, actual awakening or storm rudder replaces source comparisons.

The story inside

Opening: Opening sayings preserve their words and attribution. Development: Images and reported speech remain distinct from added interpretation. Conclusion: Future and conditional assertions retain their scope in the closing sayings.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Opening sayings preserve their words and attribution.
2
Images and reported speech remain distinct from added interpretation.
3
Future and conditional assertions retain their scope in the closing sayings.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 69199–69209
Proverbs Chapter 23 23:1. When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face: 23:2. And put a knife to thy throat, if it be so that thou have thy soul in thy own power. 23:3. Be not desirous of his meats, in which is the bread of deceit. 23:4. Labour not to be rich: but set bounds to thy prudence.
Lines 69222–69234
loose thy beautiful words. 23:9. Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of thy speech. 23:10. Touch not the bounds of little ones: and enter not into the field of the fatherless: 23:11. For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee. 23:12. Let thy heart apply itself to instruction and thy ears to words of knowledge.
Lines 69274–69304
23:27. For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit. 23:28. She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill. 23:29. Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? 23:30. Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink off their cups. 23:31. Look not upon the wine when it is yellow, when the colour thereof shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly, 23:32. But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk. 23:33. Thy eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things. 23:34. And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep when the stern is lost. 23:35. And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain: they drew me, and I felt not: when shall I awake and find wine again?