The chat will start when you send the first message.
9Listen, Israel, to the commands that promise life; pay attention, and you will become wise.[#Pr 4.20-22]
10Why is it, Israel, that you find yourself in an enemy land? Why have you grown old in a foreign country? You are ritually unclean, like the dead;
11you are already counted among the dead. But why?
12It is because you have left the source of Wisdom!
13If you had walked in God's ways, you would have lived in peace forever.
14Learn where understanding, strength, and insight are to be found. Then you will know where to find a long and full life, light to guide you, and peace.
15No one has ever found where Wisdom lives or has entered her treasure house,[#Job 28.12,20]
16-17and those who have tried have vanished: the rulers of the nations, those who hunted wild animals and birds for sport, those who accumulated vast fortunes of silver and gold, which everyone trusts and will do anything to get,
18and those who worried and schemed to make money, but who left no trace of their work behind.
19They have all disappeared and gone down to the world of the dead. Others have come along to take their place.
20A later generation was born and lived in the land, but they too did not discover the way to knowledge. They did not find the path to Wisdom or ever reach her.
21Their children also failed.
22Wisdom was not found by the Canaanites. It has not been discovered by the Edomites
23although they search after knowledge. The way to Wisdom has not been found by the merchants of Merran and Tema or by those who relate fables or by any others who seek understanding.
24O Israel, how great is the universe in which God dwells! How vast is all that he possesses!
25There is no end to it; there is no way to measure how wide or how high it is.
26Here in early times the famous giants were born, a mighty race skilled in war.[#Gn 6.4; Ws 14.6]
27But God did not choose them to be his people or show them the way of knowledge.
28They died out because they had neither understanding nor insight.
29No one has ever gone up into heaven to get Wisdom and bring her down out of the clouds.
30No one has sailed across the seas to find Wisdom or bought her with precious gold.
31No one knows how to get to her or how to discover the path that leads to her.
32The only one who knows Wisdom is God, and he knows all things. With his understanding he found her. He established the earth for all time and filled it with all kinds of animals.
33The light trembled and obeyed when he called. He sent it forth, and it appeared.
34He called the stars, and they promptly answered; they took their places and gladly shone to please the one who made them.
35He is our God, and there is none like him.
36He discovered the entire path leading to understanding and gave Wisdom to his servant Israel, whom he loved.
37From that time on, Wisdom appeared on earth and lived among us.