CHAPTER 23

Buy Truth and Sell It Not

Chapter 23 continues the 'words of the wise' with a run of very concrete scenarios — dining with a powerful host, chasing wealth, disciplining a child, envying sinners — before closing with the book's most extended, almost novelistic warning against drunkenness. The chapter's center holds one of its most quietly important commands: buy truth, and do not sell it, whatever the price.

1 ‘When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently him that is before thee’ — practical social wisdom: proximity to power requires heightened, careful attention, not relaxed assumption.

2 ‘And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite’ — a deliberately shocking image warning against gluttony or greed specifically in a setting where restraint matters for one's reputation and safety.

3 ‘Be not desirous of his dainties; seeing they are deceitful food’ — a powerful host's generosity may come with strings attached; the proverb warns against being naively drawn in by hospitality with hidden costs.

4 ‘Weary not thyself to be rich; cease from thine own wisdom’ — the pursuit of wealth is directly named as something a person can exhaust themselves chasing; 'cease from thine own wisdom' suggests self-reliant ambition itself needs to be relinquished.

5 ‘Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings, like an eagle that flieth toward heaven’ — wealth is pictured as inherently unstable, prone to vanish exactly when it seems most secure.

6 ‘Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty food’ — a stingy or ill-intentioned host's hospitality is to be refused, tying back to verse 3's warning about deceptive generosity.

7 ‘For as he thinketh within himself, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee’ — a person's inward calculation, not their outward words of welcome, is named as the true measure of their intent.

8 ‘The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words’ — the consequence of accepting such false hospitality is described almost physically — wasted effort and wasted goodwill alike.

9 ‘Speak not in the hearing of a fool; for he will despise the wisdom of thy words’ — practical discernment about audience: wisdom offered to someone unwilling to receive it isn't merely wasted, it invites contempt.

10 ‘Remove not the ancient landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless’ — echoing 22:28, the warning is sharpened here by naming the fatherless specifically — exploiting the most legally and socially defenseless.

11 ‘For their Redeemer is strong; he will plead their cause against thee’ — God himself is again named as legal advocate for the vulnerable (compare 22:23), a direct warning to anyone tempted to exploit them.

12 ‘Apply thy heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge’ — a brief return to the book's foundational call, both heart and ears engaged together, before the chapter turns to its longest sustained topic: discipline and drunkenness.

13 ‘Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beat him with the rod, he will not die’ — discipline is again commended (compare 13:24; 22:15), with a reassurance that appropriate correction, though painful, is not the harm parents might fear it to be.

14 ‘Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from Sheol’ — discipline's ultimate stakes are named directly — not mere behavior management but rescue from a destructive path that ends in death.

15 ‘My son, if thy heart be wise, my heart will be glad, even mine’ — the teacher's own personal joy is tied to the student's growth, a warm, relational note amid the chapter's more severe material.

16 ‘Yea, my heart will rejoice, when thy lips speak right things’ — the father's gladness is specifically tied to speech, echoing the book's ongoing emphasis on the tongue as the clearest evidence of a formed heart.

17 ‘Let not thy heart envy sinners; but be thou in the fear of Jehovah all the day long’ — envy of the wicked's apparent success is named as a real temptation, countered not with argument but with sustained, all-day reverence for God instead.

18 ‘For surely there is a future; and thy hope shall not be cut off’ — the antidote to envy is a longer view — confidence in an ultimate outcome that outlasts present appearances.

19 ‘Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thy heart in the way’ — a fresh call to attention introduces the chapter's extended closing warning about drunkenness.

20 ‘Be not among winebibbers, among gluttonous eaters of flesh’ — the warning names company, not just personal habit — avoiding the crowd defined by excess is itself part of the wisdom being urged.

21 ‘For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags’ — both indulgences, drink and food, are tied to the same eventual outcome: material ruin brought on by loss of self-governance.

22 ‘Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old’ — honor for parents is extended explicitly into their old age, when they are most easily dismissed or neglected.

23 ‘Buy the truth, and sell it not; yea, wisdom, and instruction, and understanding’ — one of the chapter's most important lines: truth is worth paying any price to acquire, and once possessed, should never be traded away for anything offered in exchange.

24 ‘The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; and he that begetteth a wise child will have joy of him’ — parental joy, named negatively for the foolish son elsewhere (17:21, 25), is here affirmed in its positive form.

25 ‘Let thy father and thy mother be glad, and let her that bare thee rejoice’ — the son is directly urged to be the cause of exactly the joy just described — living in a way that gives his parents something to celebrate.

26 ‘My son, give me thy heart; and let thine eyes delight in my ways’ — the appeal becomes intensely personal and relational, asking not just obedience but the heart itself, just before the chapter's most vivid warning begins.

27 ‘For a harlot is a deep ditch; and a foreign woman is a narrow pit’ — the danger already described at length in chapters 5–7 is compressed into a single sharp image, a trap easy to fall into and hard to climb out of.

28 ‘Yea, she lieth in wait as a robber, and increaseth the treacherous among men’ — her danger is described as actively predatory and, worse, self-replicating — multiplying unfaithfulness rather than remaining contained to a single victim.

29 ‘Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath complaining? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?’ — a rapid-fire series of questions builds suspense before naming, in the following verses, exactly whose life this describes.

30 ‘They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek out mixed wine’ — the answer to verse 29's questions arrives: habitual, deliberate drunkenness, sought out rather than merely stumbled into.

31 ‘Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it goeth down smoothly’ — as with the adulteress in chapters 5–7, the warning targets the moment of visual, sensory appeal, before any drink is actually taken.

32 ‘At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder’ — the same honey-to-bitterness pattern used for the adulteress (5:3–4) is applied here to alcohol — pleasant at first taste, venomous in its aftermath.

33 ‘Thine eyes shall behold strange things, and thy heart shall utter perverse things’ — impaired perception and impaired speech are named together as drunkenness's direct effects, distorting both what a person sees and what they say.

34 ‘Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast’ — two disorienting, precarious images capture the loss of stability and safety that comes with intoxication.

35 ‘They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not hurt; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again’ — the chapter's final, chilling line voices addiction itself — injury no longer registering, and the very next thought already reaching for more.