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