1. My child, if you have made a pledge for your neighbor,and have become a guarantor for a stranger,
2. if you have been ensnared by the words you have uttered,and have been caught by the words you have spoken,
3. then, my child, do this in order to deliver yourself,because you have fallen into your neighbor’s power:go, humble yourself,and appeal firmly to your neighbor.
4. Permit no sleep to your eyesor slumber to your eyelids.
5. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from a snare,and like a bird from the trap of the fowler.
6. Go to the ant, you sluggard;observe its ways and be wise!
7. It has no commander, overseer, or ruler,
8. yet it prepares its food in the summer;it gathers at the harvest what it will eat.
9. How long, you sluggard, will you lie there?When will you rise from your sleep?
10. A little sleep, a little slumber,a little folding of the hands to relax,
11. and your poverty will come like a robber,and your need like an armed man.
12. A worthless and wicked personwalks around saying perverse things;
13. he winks with his eyes,signals with his feet,and points with his fingers;
14. he plots evil with perverse thoughts in his heart,he spreads contention at all times.
15. Therefore, his disaster will come suddenly;in an instant he will be broken, and there will be no remedy.