Proverbs 2

The Benefits of Wisdom

¹My son, if you will receive my words,

and store up my commandments within you,

²so as to turn your ear to wisdom,

and apply your heart to understanding;

³yes, if you call out for discernment,

and lift up your voice for understanding;

⁴if you seek her as silver,

and search for her as for hidden treasures;

⁵then you will understand the fear of YHWH,

and find the knowledge of God.

⁶For YHWH gives wisdom.

Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

⁷He lays up sound wisdom for the upright.

He is a shield to those who walk in integrity,

⁸that he may guard the paths of justice,

and preserve the way of his saints.

⁹Then you will understand righteousness and justice,

equity and every good path.

¹⁰For wisdom will enter into your heart.

Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

¹¹Discretion will watch over you.

Understanding will keep you,

¹²to deliver you from the way of evil,

from the men who speak perverse things,

¹³who forsake the paths of uprightness,

to walk in the ways of darkness,

¹⁴who rejoice to do evil,

and delight in the perverseness of evil,

¹⁵who are crooked in their ways,

and wayward in their paths,

¹⁶to deliver you from the strange woman,

even from the foreigner who flatters with her words,

¹⁷who forsakes the friend of her youth,

and forgets the covenant of her God;

¹⁸for her house leads down to death,

her paths to the departed spirits.

¹⁹None who go to her return again,

neither do they attain to the paths of life.

²⁰Therefore walk in the way of good men,

and keep the paths of the righteous.

²¹For the upright will dwell in the land.

The perfect will remain in it.

²²But the wicked will be cut off from the land.

The treacherous will be rooted out of it.