✧1The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; ✧2To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; ✧3To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; ✧4To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. ✧5A wise [man] will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: ✧6To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings. ✧7The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge: [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction. ✧8My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: ✧
King James Version (KJV). King James Version (1769 text). Public domain outside the United Kingdom.
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For they [shall be] an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.
✧10My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.
✧11If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:
✧12Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:
✧13We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:
✧14Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse:
✧15My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:
✧16For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.
✧17Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.
✧18And they lay wait for their [own] blood; they lurk privily for their [own] lives.
✧19So [are] the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; [which] taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
✧20Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:
✧21She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, [saying],
✧22How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
✧23Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.
✧24Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;
✧25But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:
✧26I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
✧27When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
✧28Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
✧29For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
✧30They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.
✧31Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
✧32For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
✧33But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.