Through My Bible Yr 03 – September 27

Proverbs 4

¹ Listen, you sons, to a father’s discipline.
Pay attention so that you will gain discernment,
² because I have given you good instruction.
Do not abandon my teaching.
³ When I was a son living with my father,
a tender and only child with my mother,
⁴ he used to instruct me and say to me,
“Cling to my words with all your heart.
Obey my commands so that you may live.
⁵ Acquire wisdom. Acquire understanding.
Do not forget,
and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
⁶ Do not abandon it, and it will watch over you.
Love it and it will guard you.”

⁷ The beginning of wisdom is to obtain Wisdom.
Give up everything you have, in order to gain Understanding.
⁸ Cherish her, and she will exalt you.
She will honor you when you embrace her.
⁹ She will set a garland of grace on your head.
She will present you with a beautiful crown.

¹⁰ Listen, my son, and accept my words,
so that the years of your life will be many.
¹¹ I have instructed you in the way of wisdom.
I have led you along straight paths. ^[1]
12 When you walk, your stride will not be hindered.
Even if you run, you will not stumble.
¹³ Hold on to discipline. Do not let go.
Guard it, because it is your life.
¹⁴ Do not travel on the path of the wicked.
Do not walk in the way of evil people.
¹⁵ Avoid it! Do not travel on it!
Turn away from it. Pass it by.
¹⁶ For they cannot sleep
    unless they have been doing wrong,
and they are robbed of sleep
    unless they are making someone stumble,
¹⁷ because wickedness is the food they eat,
and violence is the wine they drink.
¹⁸ But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
shining brighter and brighter until it is day.
¹⁹ The way of the wicked is like gloomy darkness.
They never know where they will stumble.

²⁰ My son, pay attention to my words.
Open your ears to what I say.
²¹ Do not let them escape from your sight.
Keep them deep in your heart,
²² because they are life for those who find them
and healing for the entire body. ^[2]
23 Above all else, guard your heart carefully,
because your life flows from it.
²⁴ Turn your mouth away from perverted speech,
and keep devious lips far away from you.
²⁵ Let your eyes look straight ahead.
Let your gaze ^[3] be directly in front of you.
²⁶ Make a level pathway for your feet,
and all your ways will be secure.
²⁷ Do not swerve to the right or the left.
Turn your feet away from evil.

Proverbs 5

¹ My son, pay attention to my wisdom.
Open your ears to my understanding,
² so that you may hold on to insight,
so your lips may guard knowledge,
³ because the lips of an immoral woman drip with honey,
and her words are ^[4] as smooth as olive oil,
⁴ but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood ^[5]
and as sharp as a double-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death.
Her steps lead to hell. ^[6]
6 She gives no thought to the path of life. ^[7]
Her ways wander, but she doesn’t realize it.
⁷ Now, you sons, listen to me.
Do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Keep your way far from her.
Do not go near the doorway of her house.
⁹ If you do, you will give your wealth to others
and your years to a cruel person.
¹⁰ If you do, your work will satisfy strangers,
and the results of your labor will end up in another man’s house.
¹¹ You will groan when your end comes,
when your body and flesh are consumed.
¹² Then you will say, “Oh, how I hated discipline,
and my heart despised warnings!
¹³ I did not listen to my teachers’ voices,
and I did not open my ears to hear my instructors.
¹⁴ I soon ^[8] reached total ruin
in the midst of the assembly of the community.”

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern.
Drink running water from your own well.
¹⁶ Why should the water from your springs flow out into the street,
your streams of water into the public squares?
¹⁷ They should be yours, yours alone.
They are not for strangers to share with you.
¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed.
Obtain your joy from the wife you married in your youth,
¹⁹     who is a loving doe and a graceful deer.
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times.
Always be intoxicated with her love.
²⁰ Why should you be led astray, my son, by an immoral woman?
Why embrace a woman who is not your wife?
²¹ For the ways of a man are in front of the eyes of the Lord,
and he weighs all of his paths.
²² The evil deeds of the wicked man will capture him,
and he will be bound by the ropes of his sin.
²³ He will die for lack of discipline,
and he will go astray because of his great stupidity.

Footnotes

1. Proverbs 4:11 Or on the right track
2. Proverbs 4:22 Literally all of his flesh
3. Proverbs 4:25 Literally your eyelids
4. Proverbs 5:3 Literally her palate is
5. Proverbs 5:4 Wormwood is a toxic, bitter-tasting drink (absinthe).
6. Proverbs 5:5 Or the grave. The Hebrew word is sheol.
7. Proverbs 5:6 Or she does not make the paths of life level
8. Proverbs 5:14 Or almost