✧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.
World English Bible (WEB). World English Bible (Protestant edition). Public domain.
✧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.