Proverbs, 2

1. My son, if you heed my words and value my commands,

2. with your ear attentive to wisdom and your heart obedient to understanding;

3. if you call for perception and raise your voice for insight;

4. if you seek it as silver and search for it more than any treasure

5. then you will understand the fear of Yahweh, and you will find the knowledge of God.

6. For Yahweh gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and insight.

7. He reserves his help for the upright and is a shield for those who walk in integrity;

8. he guards the ways of the just and protects the steps of his faithful.

9. Then you will understand justice, discernment and integrity - all that leads you to happiness.

10. Wisdom will abide in your heart and knowledge will comfort your inner self.

11. Foresight will guide you and understanding will protect you.

12. It will guard you from evil, from people of misleading speech,

13. from those who have abandoned the ways of honesty to walk the roads of darkness;

14. they rejoice in evildoing, they revel in perversions;

15. their paths are crooked and their ways devious.

16. Wisdom keeps you from the alien woman, from the stranger with her smooth words,

17. who deserts the partner of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.

18. For her house inclines towards death, her paths towards the grave.

19. Those who go to her never return, they do not regain the paths of life.

20. So you will walk along the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the virtuous.

21. For the honest will inherit the land; the people of integrity will live on it.

22. The evildoers instead will be cut off from the land. The wicked will be rooted out of it.