The Value of Wisdom

¹My son, if 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 for understanding,

⁴if you seek it like silver

and search for it as for hidden treasures,

⁵then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God.

⁶For the Lord gives wisdom;

from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

⁷he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;

he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,

⁸guarding the paths of justice

and watching over the way of his saints.

⁹Then you will understand righteousness and justice

and equity, every good path;

¹⁰for wisdom will come into your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

¹¹discretion will watch 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 walk in the ways of darkness,

¹⁴who rejoice in doing evil

and delight in the perverseness of evil,

¹⁵men whose paths are crooked,

and who are devious in their ways.

¹⁶So you will be delivered from the forbidden1 woman,

from the adulteress2 with her smooth words,

¹⁷who forsakes the companion of her youth

and forgets the covenant of her God;

¹⁸for 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 will inhabit the land,

and those with integrity will remain in it,

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

and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.