Limitless Word

Proverbs 23

WEBKJVBSBESVNKJVNASBNLT

📖 Proverbs introduction

Read the chapter

1When you sit down to eat with a ruler, Consider carefully what is before you; ✦ 2And put a knife to your throat If you are a man given to appetite. ✦ 3Do not desire his delicacies, For they are deceptive food. ✦ 4Do not overwork to be rich; Because of your own understanding, cease! ✦ 5Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle toward heaven. ✦ 6Do not eat the bread of a miser, Nor desire his delicacies; ✦ 7For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, But his heart is not with you. ✦ 8The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up, And waste your pleasant words. 9Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, For he will despise the wisdom of your words. ✦ 10Do not remove the ancient landmark, Nor enter the fields of the fatherless; ✦ 11For their Redeemer is mighty; He will plead their cause against you. ✦ 12Apply your heart to instruction, And your ears to words of knowledge. ✦ 13Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. ✦ 14You shall beat him with a rod, And deliver his soul from hell. ✦ 15My son, if your heart is wise, My heart will rejoice—indeed, I myself; ✦ 16Yes, my inmost being will rejoice When your lips speak right things. ✦ 17Do not let your heart envy sinners, But be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day; ✦ 18For surely there is a hereafter, And your hope will not be cut off. ✦ 19Hear, my son, and be wise; And guide your heart in the way. ✦ 20Do not mix with winebibbers, Or with gluttonous eaters of meat; ✦ 21For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, And drowsiness will clothe a man with rags. ✦ 22Listen to your father who begot you, And do not despise your mother when she is old. ✦ 23Buy the truth, and do not sell it, Also wisdom and instruction and understanding. ✦ 24The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, And he who begets a wise child will delight in him. ✦ 25Let your father and your mother be glad, And let her who bore you rejoice. ✦ 26My son, give me your heart, And let your eyes observe my ways. ✦ 27For a harlot is a deep pit, And a seductress is a narrow well. ✦ 28She also lies in wait as for a victim, And increases the unfaithful among men. ✦ 29Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? ✦ 30Those who linger long at the wine, Those who go in search of mixed wine. ✦ 31Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it swirls around smoothly; ✦ 32At the last it bites like a serpent, And stings like a viper. ✦ 33Your eyes will see strange things, And your heart will utter perverse things. ✦ 34Yes, you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, Or like one who lies at the top of the mast, saying: ✦ 35“Theyhave struck me, but I was not hurt; They have beaten me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake, that I may seek another drink?” ✦

Tap any verse for its study page. Underlined terms mark a concept, person, or place; ✦ marks verses with cross-references.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Where this chapter connects

Prov 23 ·9Prov 22 ·7Isa 5 ·6Ps 119 ·6Prov 4 ·6Prov 2 ·5Prov 29 ·4Eph 5 ·4

Christ at the center

Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.

How Proverbs 23 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

  • ★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical

    A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

  • SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical

    Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Commentaries & study tools

← Proverbs 22Proverbs 24 →