The Value of Wisdom

¹uMy son, vif you receive my words

and treasure up my commandments with you,

²making your ear attentive to wisdom

and inclining your heart to understanding;

³yes, if you call out for insight

and raise your voice wfor understanding,

⁴if you seek it like xsilver

and search for it as for yhidden treasures,

⁵then zyou will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God.

⁶For athe Lord gives wisdom;

from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

⁷he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;

he is ba shield to those who cwalk in integrity,

⁸guarding the paths of justice

and dwatching over the way of his esaints.

⁹fThen you will understand grighteousness and justice

and equity, every good path;

¹⁰for wisdom will come into your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

¹¹hdiscretion will iwatch over you,

understanding will guard you,

¹²delivering you from the way of evil,

from men of perverted speech,

¹³who forsake the paths of uprightness

to jwalk in the ways of darkness,

¹⁴who krejoice in doing evil

and ldelight in the perverseness of evil,

¹⁵men whose mpaths are crooked,

nand who are odevious in their ways.

¹⁶So pyou will be delivered from the forbidden1 woman,

from qthe adulteress2 with rher smooth words,

¹⁷who forsakes sthe companion of her youth

and forgets tthe covenant of her God;

¹⁸ufor her house sinks down to death,

and her paths to the departed;3

¹⁹none who go to her come back,

nor do they regain the paths of life.

²⁰So you will walk in the way of the good

and keep to the paths of the righteous.

²¹For the upright vwill inhabit the land,

and those with integrity will remain in it,

²²but the wicked will be wcut off from the land,

and the treacherous will be xrooted out of it.