1 - My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you,
2 - turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding -
3 - indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding,
4 - and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 - then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
6 - For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7 - He holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,
8 - for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.
9 - Then you will understand what is right and just and fair - every good path.
10 - For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11 - Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.
12 - Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse,
13 - who have left the straight paths to walk in dark ways,
14 - who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,
15 - whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.
16 - Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words,
17 - who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God.
18 - Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead.
19 - None who go to her return or attain the paths of life.
20 - Thus you will walk in the ways of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 - For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it;
22 - but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it.