Proverbs 2

2 ¹ My son, if you receive my words and store up my commandments within you, ² making your ear attentive to wisdom and turning your heart toward understanding; ³ yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, ⁴ if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, ⁵ then you will understand the fear of our Father and find the knowledge of our Father. ⁶ For our Father gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. ⁷ He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, ⁸ guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his faithful ones.

⁹ Then you will understand righteousness and justice and fairness — every good path. ¹⁰ For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; ¹¹ discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you, ¹² rescuing you from the way of evil, from men who speak twisted things, ¹³ who abandon the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, ¹⁴ who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil, ¹⁵ whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.

¹⁶ Wisdom will rescue you also from the forbidden woman, from the stranger with her smooth words, ¹⁷ who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her Father. ¹⁸ For her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the dead. ¹⁹ None who go to her return, nor do they reach the paths of life.

²⁰ So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. ²¹ For the upright will live in the land, and those of integrity will remain in it; ²² but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be torn away from it.