When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.
Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle towards heaven.
Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.Proverbs 23:1-8
Here is down-to-earth grass-roots wisdom and realism indeed. The writer's gentle satire is very telling and very refreshing, as he chaffs the social climber and the would-be rich. What he is saying is; Remember your station, and do not put on airs. You do not really belong to that level of society and when you pretend you do, your background will up and betray you perhaps in a very humiliating way. Paul warns us in Romans 12:3 against thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and this is a particularly needful exhortation for would-be socialites. Besides the writer implies, it is rather sad to see someone setting his heart on such empty and deceptive baubles for even if they are won, and the invitation to be at the rich man's table is given, it can hardly be supposed that the rich have thereby accepted him as an equal. They of all people, are well able to see through the designs of social 'gate-crashers' and think their own thoughts (7). They are not taken in! Wealth (6) is no less elusive than social prestige and position, and just as unsatisfying and deceptive. Is it not far better to abandon, once for all, our silly pretensions, and prefer to be real, even if our station in life is humble? The sense of relief, not to say, contentment, that would come to some people if they stopped putting on airs and pretending to be something they are not, would be immense. And, who knows, if they were content simply to be themselves at last, we might begin to find them attractive and engaging people to know, instead of, as at present, rather distasteful and - dare we suggest it -5 a little vulgar in their snobbish attitude.