1 My child, if you receive my words, and store up my commands inside yourself, 2 by making your ear attentive to wisdom and by turning your heart to understanding, 3 indeed, if you call out for discernment—shout loudly for understanding— 4 if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand how to fear the Lord, and you will discover knowledge about God. 6 For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. 7 He stores up effective counsel for the upright and is like a shield for those who live with integrity, 8 to guard the paths of the righteous and to protect the way of his pious ones. 9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity—every good way. 10 For wisdom will enter your heart, and moral knowledge will be attractive to you. 11 Discretion will protect you; understanding will guard you 12 to deliver you from the way of the wicked, from those speaking perversity, 13 who leave the upright paths to walk on the dark ways, 14 who delight in doing evil; they rejoice in perverse evil, 15 whose paths are morally crooked and who are devious in their ways, 16 to deliver you from the adulterous woman, from the loose woman who has flattered you with her words, 17 who leaves the husband from her younger days and has ignored her marriage covenant made before God. 18 For she has set her house by death and her paths by the place of the departed spirits. 19 None who go in to her will return, nor will they reach the paths of life.⁠a 20 So you will walk in the way of good people and will keep on the paths of the righteous. 21 For the upright will reside in the land, and those with integrity will remain in it, 22 but the wicked will be removed from the land, and the treacherous will be torn away from it.