Chapter text
World English Bible
Verse-by-verse text with stable anchors, canonical chapter URLs, and copyable verse links.
- 1 My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you,
- 2 so as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
- 3 yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding;
- 4 if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures;
- 5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
- 6 For the LORD gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
- 7 He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
- 8 that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints.
- 9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path.
- 10 For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
- 11 Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,
- 12 to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things,
- 13 who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness,
- 14 who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil,
- 15 who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths,
- 16 to deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words,
- 17 who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God;
- 18 for her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits.
- 19 None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life.
- 20 Therefore walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.
- 21 For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.
- 22 But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.