1My son, if you take my words and treasure my commandments with you,2to make your ear attentive to wisdom and to incline your heart to understanding,3for if you call out for understanding and raise your voice for understanding,4if you seek her like silver and search for her like treasures,5then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.6For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.7and he treasures up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,8to watch over the paths of justice and to keep the way of his faithful ones.9Then you will understand righteousness and justice and uprightness—every good path.10For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.11Discretion will keep you; understanding will watch over you,12to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things,13from those who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,14who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perversities of evil,15whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their tracks.16to deliver you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who has made her words smooth,17who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God,18for her house has sunk down to death and her tracks to the shades,19all who go to her do not return, and they do not regain the paths of life,20so that you may walk in the way of the good and keep the paths of the righteous,21for the upright will dwell in the land, and the blameless will remain in it,22but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be uprooted from it.