¹My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you, ²so as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; ³yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding; ⁴if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; ⁵then you will understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. ⁶For the LORD gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. ⁷He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, ⁸that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints. ⁹Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path. ¹⁰For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. ¹¹Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you, ¹²to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things, ¹³who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness, ¹⁴who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil, ¹⁵who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths, ¹⁶to deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words, ¹⁷who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God; ¹⁸for her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits. ¹⁹None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life. ²⁰Therefore walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. ²¹For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it. ²²But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.