| 1 My son, if you heed my words and value my commands, | |
| 2 with your ear attentive to wisdom and your heart obedient to understanding; | |
| 3 if you call for perception and raise your voice for insight; | |
| 4 if you seek it as silver and search for it more than any treasure | |
| 5 then you will understand the fear of Yahweh, and you will find the knowledge of God. | |
| 6 For Yahweh gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and insight. | |
| 7 He reserves his help for the upright and is a shield for those who walk in integrity; | |
| 8 he guards the ways of the just and protects the steps of his faithful. | |
| 9 Then you will understand justice, discernment and integrity – all that leads you to happiness. | |
| 10 Wisdom will abide in your heart and knowledge will comfort your inner self. | |
| 11 Foresight will guide you and understanding will protect you. | |
| 12 It will guard you from evil, from people of misleading speech, | |
| 13 from those who have abandoned the ways of honesty to walk the roads of darkness; | |
| 14 they rejoice in evildoing, they revel in perversions; | |
| 15 their paths are crooked and their ways devious. | |
| 16 Wisdom keeps you from the alien woman, from the stranger with her smooth words, | |
| 17 who deserts the partner of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. | |
| 18 For her house inclines towards death, her paths towards the grave. | |
| 19 Those who go to her never return, they do not regain the paths of life. | |
| 20 So you will walk along the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the virtuous. | |
| 21 For the honest will inherit the land; the people of integrity will live on it. | |
| 22 The evildoers instead will be cut off from the land. The wicked will be rooted out of it. | |
