Proverbs, 2

¹ My son, if you will receive my sayings and treasure up my own commandments with yourself,

² so as to pay attention to wisdom with your ear, that you may incline your heart to discernment;

³ if, moreover, you call out for understanding itself and you give forth your voice for discernment itself,

⁴ if you keep seeking for it as for silver, and as for hid treasures you keep searching for it,

⁵ in that case you will understand the fear of Jehovah, and you will find the very knowledge of God.^*1

⁶ For Jehovah himself gives wisdom; out of his mouth there are knowledge and discernment.

⁷ And for the upright ones he will treasure up practical wisdom; for those walking in integrity he is a shield,

⁸ by observing the paths of judgment, and he will guard the very way of his loyal ones.^*1

⁹ In that case you will understand righteousness and judgment and uprightness, the entire course of what is good.

¹⁰ When wisdom enters into your heart and knowledge itself becomes pleasant to your very soul,

¹¹ thinking ability itself will keep guard over you, discernment itself will safeguard you,

¹² to deliver you from the bad way, from the man speaking perverse things,

¹³ from those leaving the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,

¹⁴ from those who are rejoicing in doing bad, who are joyful in the perverse things of badness;

¹⁵ those whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their general course;

¹⁶ to deliver you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who has made her own sayings smooth,

¹⁷ who is leaving the confidential friend of her youth and who has forgotten the very covenant of her God.

¹⁸ For down to death her house does sink and down to those impotent in death^*1 her tracks.

¹⁹ None of those having relations with her will come back, nor will they regain the paths of those living.

²⁰ The purpose is that you may walk in the way of good people and that the paths of the righteous ones you may keep.

²¹ For the upright are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it.

²² As regards the wicked, they will be cut off from the very earth; and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.