| 1 | My son, if you will receive my words, And store up my commandments within you;
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| 2 | So as to turn your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to understanding;
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| 3 | Yes, if you call out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding;
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| 4 | If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures:
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| 5 | Then you will understand the fear of Yahweh, And find the knowledge of God.
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| 6 | For Yahweh gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
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| 7 | He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity;
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| 8 | That he may guard the paths of justice, And preserve the way of his saints.
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| 9 | Then you will understand righteousness and justice, Equity and every good path.
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| 10 | For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
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| 11 | Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,
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| 12 | To deliver you from the way of evil, From the men who speak perverse things;
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| 13 | Who forsake the paths of uprightness, To walk in the ways of darkness;
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| 14 | Who rejoice to do evil, And delight in the perverseness of evil;
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| 15 | Who are crooked in their ways, And wayward in their paths:
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| 16 | To deliver you from the strange woman, Even from the foreigner who flatters with her words;
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| 17 | Who forsakes the friend of her youth, And forgets the covenant of her God:
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| 18 | For her house leads down to death, Her paths to the dead.
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| 19 | None who go to her return again, Neither do they attain to the paths of life:
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| 20 | That you may walk in the way of good men, And keep the paths of the righteous.
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| 21 | For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.
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| 22 | But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.
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