The Value of Wisdom

¹ My son, if you receive my words

and treasure up my commandments with you,

² making your ear attentive to wisdom

and inclining your heart to understanding;

³ yes, if you call out for insight

and raise your voice for understanding,

⁴ if you seek it like silver

and search for it as for hidden treasures,

⁵ then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God.

⁶ For the Lord gives wisdom;

from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

⁷ he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;

he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,

⁸ guarding the paths of justice

and watching over the way of his saints.

⁹ Then you will understand righteousness and justice

and equity, every good path;

¹⁰ for wisdom will come into your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

¹¹ discretion will watch over you,

understanding will guard you,

¹² delivering you from the way of evil,

from men of perverted speech,

¹³ who forsake the paths of uprightness

to walk in the ways of darkness,

¹⁴ who rejoice in doing evil

and delight in the perverseness of evil,

¹⁵ men whose paths are crooked,

and who are devious in their ways.

¹⁶ So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,

from the adulteress with her smooth words,

¹⁷ who forsakes the companion of her youth

and forgets the covenant of her God;

¹⁸ for her house sinks down to death,

and her paths to the departed;

¹⁹ none who go to her come back,

nor do they regain the paths of life.

²⁰ So you will walk in the way of the good

and keep to the paths of the righteous.

²¹ For the upright will inhabit the land,

and those with integrity will remain in it,

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

and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.