1 M y son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you;

2 S o as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;

3 Y es, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding;

4 I f you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures:

5 t hen you will understand the fear of Yahweh, and find the knowledge of God.

6 F or Yahweh gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

7 H e lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity;

8 t hat he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints.

9 T hen you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path.

10 F or wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

11 D iscretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,

12 t o deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things;

13 w ho forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;

14 w ho rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil;

15 w ho are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths:

16 T o deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words;

17 w ho forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God:

18 f or her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits.

19 N one who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life:

20 t hat you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.

21 F or the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.

22 B ut the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.