UST PROV Chapter 27

◄ PROV 27 ► ║ ═ ©

27 Do not brag about what you will do tomorrow,

because you do not know what will happen then.

2 Do not praise yourself; let someone else praise you.

Indeed, let other people praise you, not yourself.

3 Stones and sand are heavy,

but fools are so annoying that they are harder to bear than either of those.

4 Angry people are cruel and furious people are destructive,

but no one can withstand jealous people!

5 It is better to correct people openly, than to love them without showing them that you love them.

6 Friends will be faithful to you by criticizing you when necessary,

but enemies will deceive you by acting affectionately toward you.

7 When people have full stomachs, they do not want to eat even honey.

But when people are hungry, even bitter things taste sweet to them.

8 People who stray from their homes

are like birds that stray from their nests.

9 Fragrant oil and perfume make people feel happy,

but having a friend who advises you sincerely is even better.

10 Do not ignore your friends or your father’s friends.

Do not think that you must go to the house of a relative when something disastrous happens to you.

Rather, it is better to go to a nearby neighbor than to relatives who live far away.

11 My child, make me happy by becoming wise.

Then I will be able to reply to anyone who argues against me.

12 Sensible people observe something dangerous happening and avoid it,

but naive people ignorantly do not avoid it and suffer for doing so.

13 Take the coats of people who promise to pay a loan for someone whom they do not know.

Indeed, hold onto the coats of people who do so for a foreigner.

14 If you rise early in the morning and loudly call out a blessing to your neighbor while he is still sleeping, he will consider it to be a curse, not a blessing.

15 A wife who always argues with you is as annoying as

constantly dripping water on a rainy day.

16 It is as difficult to stop her from arguing as stopping the wind,

or catching oil in one hand.

17 We can use one iron tool to sharpen another iron tool; similarly, when one person shares what he is thinking, it can help another person to think more clearly.

18 Just as people who take care of fruit trees will also eat the fruit from those trees,

so too will masters honor their servants who guard them.

19 When people look in water, the water reflects their faces.

In the same way, what people think reveals what kinds of people they are.

20 Just as the place where dead people go never becomes full;

so people never stop wanting things.

21 People use crucibles and furnaces to test and refine silver and gold.

In the same way, people can know what kind of person someone is by how he reacts when people praise him.

22 If you were to crush a fool the way that you would crush grain into powder,

you would still not be able to find any part of him that is not foolish.

23 Be fully aware of how your sheep are doing.

Indeed, consider carefully how your animals fare.

24 Do so because riches will not last forever.

Even a king’s family will not rule forever!

25 Harvest the grass and then you will see new grass.

Collect and store the plants that grow on the hillside.

26 If you do these things, then you will have lambs with wool that you can clothe yourself with. You will also have male goats that you can sell for enough money to buy a field.

27 You will even have female goats that produce enough milk for yourself, your family,

and your servant girls to drink.

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