- 1My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you;
- 2So as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
- 3Yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding;
- 4If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures:
- 5then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.
- 6For the Lord gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
- 7He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity;
- 8that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints.
- 9Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path.
- 10For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
- 11Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,
- 12to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things;
- 13who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;
- 14who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil;
- 15who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths:
- 16To deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words;
- 17who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God:
- 18for her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits.
- 19None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life:
- 20that you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.
- 21For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.
- 22But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.