[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 departed spirits.
[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.