The Benefits of Wisdom

• and hide my commands with you,
• 2 in order to incline your ear toward wisdom, then you shall apply your heart to understanding.
• 3 [fn] if you lift[fn] your voice for insight,
• 4 and search her out[fn]
• 5  and the knowledge of God you will find.
• 6  from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
• 7 [fn] sound judgment, a shield for those who walk uprightly,
  • 8 in order to guard paths of justice and keep[fn] the way of his faithful ones.
  • 9  and uprightness—every good course—
  • 10  and knowledge will be pleasing to your soul.[fn]
  • 11  understanding will protect you,
  • 12 in order to deliver you from the way of evil,[fn]from a man who speaks devious things—
  • 13  to walk in ways of darkness,
  • 14  for they delight in the deviousness of evil,
  • 15 [fn] and devious in their paths;
  • 16 in order to deliver you from a strange woman, from a foreign woman who flatters[fn]with her sayings,
  • 17  and has forgotten the covenant of her God,
  • 18  and to the dead[fn] are her paths.
  • 19 Of all who go to her, none shall return, nor do they reach paths of life.
  • 20  and the paths of those who are righteous you shall keep.
  • 21 in the land,[fn]and those who are blameless[fn] will remain in it.
  • 22 and those who are treacherous will be uprooted from it.