The Benefits of Wisdom
My son, if you receive my sayings and store up my commandments with you,
making your ear attend to wisdom, inclining your heart to insight;
for if you call out to understanding, give your voice to insight;
if you seek her like silver and search for her like hidden treasures —
then you will understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and insight.
He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of judgment; and he keeps the way of his faithful ones.
Then you will understand righteousness and judgment and uprightness — every good track.
For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you, insight will guard you —
to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things,
those who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice to do evil, who delight in the perversities of evil,
whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their tracks;
to deliver you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who has made her sayings smooth,
who forsakes the companion of her youth and has forgotten the covenant of her God.
For her house sinks down to death, and her tracks to the shades.
None who go to her return, nor do they reach the paths of life.
So walk in the way of the good, and keep the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will dwell in the land, and the blameless will remain in it,
but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be torn away from it.