Proverbs [Sayings] 2:4-22

⁴If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures:

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

⁶For Adonai gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

⁷He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity;

⁸that he may guard the paths of mishpat ·justice·, and preserve the way of his saints.

⁹Then you will understand righteousness and mishpat ·justice·, equity and every good path.

¹⁰For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

¹¹Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,

¹²to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things;

¹³who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;

¹⁴who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil;

¹⁵who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths:

¹⁶To deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words;

¹⁷who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant ·binding contract between two or more parties· of her God:

¹⁸for her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits.

¹⁹None who go to her teshuvah ·completely return· again, neither do they attain to the paths of life:

²⁰that you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the upright.

²¹For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.

²²But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.