1. My son, if you will receive my words, and treasure up my commandments with you,
2. so that you attend to wisdom, you shall extend your heart to understanding.
3. For if you cry for discernment, lifting up your voice for understanding;
4. if you seek her as silver, and search for her as hidden treasures,
5. then you shall understand the fear of Jehovah and find knowledge of God.
6. For Jehovah gives wisdom; out of His mouth are knowledge and understanding.
7. He lays up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to the ones who walk in integrity,
8. to guard the paths of judgment, and He protects the way of His saints.
9. Then you shall understand righteousness and judgment and honesty, yea, every good path.
10. When wisdom enters into your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul,
11. discretion shall keep you, understanding shall watch over you,
12. to deliver you from the evil way, from the man who speaks perverse things,
13. those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,
14. who rejoice to do evil, they delight in the perversities of the wicked,
15. whose paths are crooked, who are devious in their tracks;
16. these will deliver you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words,
17. who forsakes the guide of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.
18. For her house leads down to death, and her tracks to the departed spirits.
19. All going in to her do not return, nor do they reach the ways of life.
20. Then you may walk in the ways of the good and keep the ways of the righteous.
21. For the upright shall live 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.