The Way of the Gazelle
- If you end up having pledged some sort of favor or duty or money to a neighbor, trapped by your own promise, and aren't able to live up to it or pay up, you should go to your neighbor and beg.
- You shouldn't sleep until you've settled your failure to live up to your promise, acting like a gazelle or bird, desperate to escape a hunter.
God's Pet Peeves
- You should consider the ant's behavior, if you're a "lazybones," since ants work hard.
- If you sit around napping and folding your hands, even for a little, it will eventually ruin you and bring disaster and poverty, which will raid you like a warrior.
- Also, wicked people who walk around talking in a crooked and deceiving way, pointing their fingers at others, and generally scheming to cause trouble—they will suffer disaster, as well. Suddenly, they'll be ruined with no hope of repair.
- The writer says that God hates seven things: eyes that are haughty, a tongue that lies, hands that shed the blood of innocent people, hearts which plot evil, feet that run to do evil things, people who lie as witnesses, and one who causes strife in his or her family.
Avoid the Noid… and Adulteresses
- Keep your father's and your mother's commandments in your heart at all times.
- These instructions will guide you when you're walking, sleeping, and waking up.
- They help guide your way, and your parents' discipline helps save you from falling into the clutches of an adulteress later on in life.
- The beauty of an adulteress is seductive, but it also happens to be totally evil. Where it only costs a loaf of bread to visit a prostitute, an adulteress can cost a man his life.
- The author asks if one can carry coals against your chest or walk on them without being burned. The answer is (obviously) "No." The same thing is true for someone who has sex with his neighbor's wife—he'll get burned or punished in some way.
- People don't hate thieves who steal because they're hungry—but they punish those thieves seven times as badly when they catch them, anyway.
- But a person who commits adultery has no good reason for his crime. Disgrace and dishonor will follow that person, and the angry husband of the woman he cheated with will take revenge, refusing to be bribed.