✧My 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.