Proverbs 2:1-22 - The Benefits Of Wisdom

¹ My child, if you will receive my sayings, and hide my commands with you, ² [in order] to incline your ear toward wisdom, [then] you shall apply your heart to understanding. ³ For if you cry out for understanding, [if] you lift your voice for insight, ⁴ if you seek her like silver and search her out {like treasure}, ⁵ then you will understand the fear of Yahweh, and the knowledge of God you will find. ⁶ For Yahweh will give wisdom; from his mouth [come] knowledge and understanding. ⁷ For the upright, he stores sound judgment, a shield for those who walk uprightly, ⁸ [in order] to guard paths of justice and keep the way of his faithful [ones]. ⁹ Then you will understand righteousness and justice and uprightness--every good course-- ¹⁰ for wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasing to your soul. ¹¹ Discretion will watch over you; understanding will protect you, ¹² [in order] to deliver you from the way of evil, from a man who speaks devious things-- ¹³ those who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in ways of darkness, ¹⁴ those who are happy to do evil, [for] they delight in [the] deviousness of evil, ¹⁵ {who are crooked in their ways}, and devious in their paths; ¹⁶ [in order] to deliver you from a strange woman, from a foreign woman [who] flatters [with] her sayings, ¹⁷ she who forsakes the partner of her youth and has forgotten the covenant of her God, ¹⁸ for her house sinks to death, and to the dead are her paths. ¹⁹ [Of] all who go to her, none shall return, nor do they reach paths of life. ²⁰ So that you will walk on the road of those who are good, and the paths of those who are righteous you shall keep. ²¹ For those who are upright will dwell [in the] land, and those who are blameless will remain in it. ²² And those who are wicked will be cut off from the land, and those who are treacherous will be uprooted from it.