1 My son, if you will receive My words and hide My commandments with you,

2 so that you attend to wisdom, you shall extend your heart to understanding;

3 yea, if you cry after knowledge [and] lift up your voice for understanding;

4 if you seek her as silver, and search [for] her as for hidden treasures,

5 then you shall understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

6 For the LORD gives wisdom; out of His mouth [come] knowledge and understanding.

7 He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous; [He is] a shield to those who walk uprightly.

8 He keeps the paths of judgment, and guards the way of His saints.

9 Then you shall understand righteousness and judgment and honesty, every good path.

10 When wisdom enters into your heart, and knowledge is pleasing to your soul;

11 judgment shall keep you, understanding shall keep you,

12 to deliver you from the way of the evil man, from the man who speaks wicked things;

13 those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,

14 who rejoice to do evil [and] delight in the perversities of the wicked;

15 whose ways [are] crooked, and [are] devious in their paths.

16 [They] will deliver you from the strange woman, the stranger [who] flatters [with] her words,

17 who forsakes the guide of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.

18 For her house bows down to death, and her paths to the dead.

19 All who go in to her do not return, nor do they take hold of the paths of life,

20 in order that you may walk in the way of good and keep the paths of the righteous.

21 For the upright shall dwell [in] the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.

22 But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.