Proverbs, 1

¹ The proverbs of Solʹo·mon the son of David, the king of Israel,

² for one to know wisdom and discipline, to discern the sayings of understanding,

³ to receive the discipline that gives insight, righteousness and judgment and uprightness,

⁴ to give to the inexperienced ones shrewdness, to a young man knowledge and thinking ability.

⁵ A wise person will listen and take in more instruction, and a man of understanding is the one who acquires skillful direction,

⁶ to understand a proverb and a puzzling saying, the words of wise persons and their riddles.

⁷ The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge. Wisdom and discipline are what mere fools have despised.

⁸ Listen, my son, to the discipline of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother.

⁹ For they are a wreath of attractiveness to your head and a fine necklace to your throat.

¹⁰ My son, if sinners try to seduce you, do not consent.

¹¹ If they keep saying: “Do go with us. Do let us lie in ambush for blood. Do let us lie in concealment for the innocent men without any cause.

¹² Let us swallow them down alive just like Sheʹol,^*1 even whole, like those going down into a pit.

¹³ Let us find all sorts of precious valuables. Let us fill our houses with spoil.

¹⁴ Your lot you ought to cast in among us. Let there come to be just one bag belonging to all of us”—

¹⁵ my son, do not go in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their roadway.

¹⁶ For their feet are those that run to sheer badness, and they keep hastening to shed blood.

¹⁷ For it is for nothing that the net is spread before the eyes of anything owning wings.

¹⁸ Consequently they themselves lie in ambush for the very blood of these; they lie in concealment for their souls.^*1

¹⁹ Thus are the paths of everyone making unjust profit. It takes away the very soul of its owners.

²⁰ True wisdom itself^*1 keeps crying aloud in the very street. In the public squares it keeps giving forth its voice.

²¹ At the upper end of the noisy streets^*1 it calls out. At the entrances of the gates into the city it says its own sayings:

²² “How long will YOU inexperienced ones keep loving inexperience, and [how long] must YOU ridiculers desire for yourselves outright ridicule, and [how long] will YOU stupid ones keep hating knowledge?

²³ Turn back at my reproof. Then to YOU I will cause my spirit to bubble forth; I will make my words known to YOU.

²⁴ Because I have called out but YOU keep refusing, I have stretched out my hand but there is no one paying attention,

²⁵ and YOU keep neglecting all my counsel, and my reproof YOU have not accepted,

²⁶ I also, for my part, shall laugh at YOUR own disaster, I shall mock when what YOU dread comes,

²⁷ when what YOU dread comes just like a storm, and YOUR own disaster gets here just like a storm wind, when distress and hard times come upon YOU.

²⁸ At that time they will keep calling me, but I shall not answer; they will keep looking for me, but they will not find me,

²⁹ for the reason that they hated knowledge, and the fear of Jehovah they did not choose.

³⁰ They did not consent to my counsel; they disrespected all my reproof.

³¹ So they will eat from the fruitage of their way, and they will be glutted with their own counsels.

³² For the renegading of the inexperienced ones is what will kill them, and the easygoingness of the stupid is what will destroy them.

³³ As for the one listening to me, he will reside in security and be undisturbed from dread of calamity.”