1My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you,
2making your ear attentive to wisdom, inclining your heart to understanding—
3yes, if you call out for insight and lift up your voice for understanding,
4if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasures,
5then you will understand the fear of Yahweh and find the knowledge of God.
6For Yahweh 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 faithful ones.
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,
12to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things,
13those who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,
14who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perversities of evil,
15whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.
16to deliver you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who has made her words smooth,
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 shades of the dead.
19None who go to her return, and they do not reach 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 dwell in the land, and the blameless will remain in it,
22but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be torn away from it.
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