1 MY son, if you will receive my words and hide my commandments in your heart,

2 And incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding,

3 Yea, if you cry after knowledge and lift up your voice to understanding,

4 If you seek it as silver, and search for it as for hidden treasure;

5 Then you will understand how to worship the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

6 For it is the LORD who gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

7 He stores up hope for the upright; he helps those who walk without blemish.

8 He keeps the paths of justice, and preserves the ways of his saints.

9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice and the uprightness of all good ways.

10 When wisdom enters into your heart and knowledge is pleasant to your soul.

11 Intelligence shall preserve you, and the understanding of the pious men shall deliver you;

12 That you might be delivered from evil ways, from men who speak perverse things,

13 Who forsake the path of uprightness to walk in the way of darkness;

14 Who rejoice to do evil and delight in the perverseness of evil things;

15 Men whose ways are crooked and whose paths are perverse.

16 Wisdom shall deliver you from a strange woman who flatters with her words,

17 Who has forsaken the mother of her youth and forgotten the covenant of her God.

18 For she has forgotten the threshold of her house and the way of her paths.

19 None who go to her return again, neither do they remember the path of life.

20 Therefore you must walk in the way of good men and keep the path of the righteous.

21 For the upright shall dwell in the land, and those who are unblemished shall remain in it.

22 But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth and the ungodly shall be rooted out of it.