My son, if you accept my words, keep in your heart my commandments, make your ears receptive to wisdom, apply your mind to comprehension, and yes, if you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, and if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will know reverence for the divine and gain the knowledge of God. For it is Jehovah who imparts wisdom and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
He has reserved cherished wisdom for the righteous and is a shield for those who walk with rectitude, for he guards the paths of justice and watches over the ways traveled by those faithful to him. Then you will understand righteousness, justice, and fairness — indeed, every correct path to take. For wisdom will enter your mind and knowledge will bring pleasure to your being. Discretion will preserve you and understanding will guard you. Wisdom will deliver you from the ways of wicked men, who speak perversely, have departed from the way that is straight to wander down dark paths, who delight in wrong-doing, rejoice in the perversities of evil, whose paths are crooked and whose ways are devious.
Wisdom will protect you from the exotic woman, the seductive flattery of the adulteress who has abandoned the husband she wed when young and has ignored the vows of marriage made before God, for her house leads to death and her path, to the realm of departed spirits. None who go to her return or regain the paths of life.
Follow then the ways of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous, for the upright will inhabit the land and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked will be driven off the land, and the treacherous will be uprooted from it.
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