^2:1 My son, if you will receive my words and lay up my commandments with you, ^2:2 so as to incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding, ^2:3 because, if you cry after discernment and lift up your voice for understanding, ^2:4 if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, ^2:5 then you will understand the fear of Jehovah and find the knowledge of God.

    ^2:6 Because Jehovah gives wisdom. Out of his mouth is knowledge and understanding. ^2:7 He lays up sound-wisdom for the upright, a shield to those who walk in integrity, ^2:8 that he may guard the paths of justice and preserve the way of his holy ones. ^2:9Then you will understand righteousness and justice and uprightness, yes, every good path.

    ^2:10 Because wisdom will enter into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul, ^2:11discretion will watch over you, understanding will keep you, ^2:12 to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things, ^2:13 who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, ^2:14 who rejoice to do evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, ^2:15 who are crooked in their ways and wayward in their paths, ^2:16 to deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreign woman who flatters with her words, ^2:17 who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God ^2:18 (because her house inclines to death and her paths to the dead; ^2:19 none who go to her return again, nor do they attain to the paths of life), ^2:20 that you may walk in the way of good men and keep the paths of the righteous.

    ^2:21 Because the upright will dwell in the land and the perfect will remain in it. ^2:22 But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.