Proverbs 2:1–22

¹My son, if you will receive my sayings and treasure up my own commandments with yourself,²so as to pay attention to wisdom with your ear, that you may incline your heart to discernment;³if, moreover, you call out for understanding itself and you give forth your voice for discernment itself,⁴if you keep seeking for it as for silver, and as for hid treasures you keep searching for it,⁵in that case you will understand the fear of Jehovah, and you will find the very knowledge of God.⁶For Jehovah himself gives wisdom; out of his mouth there are knowledge and discernment.⁷And for the upright ones he will treasure up practical wisdom; for those walking in integrity he is a shield,⁸by observing the paths of judgment, and he will guard the very way of his loyal ones.⁹In that case you will understand righteousness and judgment and uprightness, the entire course of what is good.

¹⁰When wisdom enters into your heart and knowledge itself becomes pleasant to your very soul,¹¹thinking ability itself will keep guard over you, discernment itself will safeguard you,¹²to deliver you from the bad way, from the man speaking perverse things,¹³from those leaving the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,¹⁴from those who are rejoicing in doing bad, who are joyful in the perverse things of badness;¹⁵those whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their general course;¹⁶to deliver you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who has made her own sayings smooth,¹⁷who is leaving the confidential friend of her youth and who has forgotten the very covenant of her God.¹⁸For down to death her house does sink and down to those impotent in death her tracks.¹⁹None of those having relations with her will come back, nor will they regain the paths of those living.

²⁰The purpose is that you may walk in the way of good people and that the paths of the righteous ones you may keep.²¹For the upright are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it.²²As regards the wicked, they will be cut off from the very earth; and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.