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.
