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 For if you cry out for understanding,[fn] if you lift[fn] your voice for insight,
• 4 if you seek her like silver and search her out like treasure ,[fn]
• 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[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 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.[fn]
  • 11 Discretion will watch over you; understanding will protect you,
  • 12 in order to deliver you from the way of evil,[fn] 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 ,[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 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[fn] 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,[fn] and those who are blameless[fn] 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.