| 1 | My son, if you would accept my words, and conceal my commandments within you, |
| 2 | so that your ears may listen to wisdom, then bend your heart in order to know prudence. |
| 3 | For if you would call upon wisdom and bend your heart to prudence, |
| 4 | if you will seek her like money, and dig for her as if for treasure, |
| 5 | then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and you will discover the knowledge of God. |
| 6 | For the Lord bestows wisdom, and out of his mouth, prudence and knowledge. |
| 7 | He will preserve the salvation of the righteous, and he will protect those who walk in simplicity: |
| 8 | serving the paths of justice, and guarding the ways of sanctity. |
| 9 | Then you shall understand justice and judgment, and equity, and every good path. |
| 10 | If wisdom is to enter into your heart, and if knowledge is to become pleasing to your soul, |
| 11 | then counsel must guard you, and prudence must serve you, |
| 12 | so that you may be rescued from the evil way, and from the man who speaks perversities, |
| 13 | from those who leave the straight path to walk in dark ways, |
| 14 | who rejoice when they have done evil, and who exult in the most wicked things. |
| 15 | Their ways are perverse, and their steps are infamous. |
| 16 | So may you be rescued from the foreign woman, and from the outsider, who softens her speech, |
| 17 | and who leaves behind the Guide of her youth, |
| 18 | and who has forgotten the covenant of her God. For her household inclines toward death, and her paths toward Hell. |
| 19 | All those who enter to her will not return again, nor will they take hold of the paths of life. |
| 20 | So may you walk in the good way, and keep to the difficult paths of the just. |
| 21 | For those who are upright shall live upon the earth, and the simple shall continue upon it. |
| 22 | Yet truly, the impious shall perish from the earth, and those who act unjustly shall be taken away from it. |
