The Value of Wisdom

¹My son, if you will receive my words[#Pr 4:1]

and hide my commandments within you,

²so that you incline your ear to wisdom

and apply your heart to understanding;

³yes, if you cry 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 the Lord

and find the knowledge of God.

⁶For the Lord gives wisdom;

from His mouth come knowledge and understanding;

⁷He stores up sound wisdom for the righteous;

He is a shield to those who walk uprightly;

⁸He guards the paths of justice

and preserves the way of His faithful ones.

⁹Then you will understand righteousness and justice

and equity, every good path;

¹⁰for wisdom will enter your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

¹¹discretion will preserve you,[#Pr 4:6]

understanding will keep you,

¹²to deliver you from the way of evil,

from the man who speaks perverse things,

¹³from those who leave the paths of uprightness

to walk in the ways of darkness,

¹⁴who rejoice in doing evil

and delight in the perversity of evil,

¹⁵whose paths are crooked,[#Ps 125:5]

and who are devious in their ways;

¹⁶to deliver you from the wayward woman,

from the adulteress who flatters with her words,

¹⁷who forsakes the companion of her youth[#Jer 3:4]

and forgets the covenant of her God.

¹⁸For her house sinks down to death,

and her paths to the dead;

¹⁹none who go to her return,

nor do they regain the paths of life.

²⁰Thus you walk in the way of the good

and keep to the paths of the righteous.

²¹For the upright will dwell in the land,[#Ps 37:9, 29]

and the innocent will remain in it,

²²but the wicked will be cut off from the earth,

and the unfaithful will be rooted out of it.