1: My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you; 2: So as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; 3: Yes, if you call out for discernment, 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 will understand the fear of Yahweh, and find the knowledge of God. 6: For Yahweh gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. 7: He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity; 8: that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints. 9: Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path. 10: For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. 11: Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you, 12: to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things; 13: who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; 14: who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil; 15: who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths: 16: To deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words; 17: who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God: 18: for her house leads down to death, her paths to the dead. 19: None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life: 20: that you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. 21: For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it. 22: But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.