Proverbs 2:1-22
2 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.*+
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.*+
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* 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.+
Footnotes
^ “God.” Heb., ʼElo·himʹ.
^ Or, “his men of loving-kindness,” Mmargin (TLXXSyVg are similar); M, “his man of loving-kindness.”
^ “Those impotent in death.” Heb., repha·ʼimʹ; T(Aram.), gib·bo·raiʹia, “the giants”; LXX, “Hades [Gr., haiʹdei] with the earthborn ones”; Vgc(Lat.), inʹfe·ros.
