17. Do not try to be overly just, and do not try to be more wise than is necessary, lest you become stupid.
18. Do not act with great impiety, and do not choose to be foolish, lest you die before your time.
19. It is good for you to support a just man. Furthermore, you should not withdraw your hand from him, for whoever fears God, neglects nothing.
20. Wisdom has strengthened the wise more than ten princes of a city.
21. But there is no just man on earth, who does good and does not sin.
22. So then, do not attach your heart to every word that is spoken, lest perhaps you may hear your servant speaking ill of you.
23. For your conscience knows that you, too, have repeatedly spoken evil of others.
24. I have tested everything in wisdom. I have said: "I will be wise." And wisdom withdrew farther from me,
25. so much more than it was before. Wisdom is very profound, so who shall reveal her?
26. I have examined all things in my soul, so that I may know, and consider, and seek out wisdom and reason, and so that I may recognize the impiety of the foolish, and the error of the imprudent.
27. And I have discovered a woman more bitter than death: she who is like the snare of a hunter, and whose heart is like a net, and whose hands are like chains. Whoever pleases God shall flee from her. But whoever is a sinner shall be seized by her.
28. Behold, Ecclesiastes said, I have discovered these things, one after another, in order that I might discover the explanation
29. which my soul still seeks and has not found. One man among a thousand, I have found; a woman among them all, I have not found.