1: The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; 2: To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; 3: To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; 4: To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. 5: A wise [man] will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain to wise counsels: 6: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings. 7: The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge: [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction. 8: My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: 9: For they [shalt be] an ornament of grace to thy head, and chains about thy neck. 10: My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. 11: If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause: 12: Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit: 13: We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: 14: Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse: 15: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: 16: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. 17: Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. 18: And they lay wait for their [own] blood; they lurk privily for their [own] lives. 19: So [are] the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; [who] taketh away the life of its owners. 20: Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: 21: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, [saying], 22: How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? 23: Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit to you, I will make known to you my words. 24: Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 25: But ye have set at naught all my counsel, and rejected my reproof: 26: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; 27: When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. 28: Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: 29: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: 30: They rejected my counsel: they despised all my reproof. 31: Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. 32: For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. 33: But whoever hearkeneth to me shall dwell in safety, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.
