CHAPTER 2
1My son, if you take up my sayings,
and my commands you store within you,
2to make your ear hearken to wisdom,
incline your heart to discernment,
3for if you call out to understanding,
raise your voice to discernment,
4if you seek it like silver,
search for it like treasure,
5then will you understand the LORD’s fear,
and you will find the knowledge of God.
6For the LORD gives wisdom,
from His mouth, discerning knowledge.
7He stores for the upright prudence,
a shield to those who walk blameless,
8to keep the paths of justice
and He watches the way of His faithful.
9Then you will understand righteousness, justice,
and uprightness, each pathway of good.
10For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge be sweet to your palate.
11Cunning will watch over you,
discernment will keep you,
12to save you from a way of evil,
from a man who speaks perversely.
13They forsake the paths of uprightness
to go in the ways of darkness,
14they rejoice to do evil,
delight in evil’s perverseness,
15whose paths are crooked,
and twisted in their pathways.
16To save you from a stranger-woman,
from a smooth-talking alien woman,
17who forsakes the guide of her youth
and the pact of her God forgets.
18For her house leads down to death
and to the shades, her pathways.
19All who come to her will not return,
and will not attain the paths of life.
20So that you walk in the way of the good,
and the paths of the just you keep.
21For the upright will dwell on earth
and the blameless survive on it.
22But the wicked are cut off from the earth,
and traitors torn away from it.