1My son, if you receive my words, and lay up my commandments (mitzvah) with you;
2To make your ear attend to wisdom, and incline your heart to understanding;
3Yea, if you call for insight, and give your voice for understanding;
4If you seek her like silver, and search for her like hidden treasures;
5Then you will understand the fear of YHWH, and find the knowledge of God.
6For YHWH gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; a shield to those who walk in integrity;
8To guard the paths of judgment (mishpat), and he keeps the way of his faithful ones.
9Then you will understand righteousness and judgment (mishpat) and equity, every good course.
10For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul (nephesh);
11Discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you;
12To deliver you from the way of evil, from the man (ish) who speaks perverse things;
13Who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;
14Who rejoice to do evil, they delight in the perversities of evil;
15Whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their tracks;
16To deliver you from the strange woman (ishah), from the foreign woman who makes her words smooth;
17Who forsakes the companion of her youth, and forgets the covenant (berit) of her God.
18For her house sinks down to death, and her tracks to the shades (Rephaim);
19None who go to her return, nor do they reach the paths of life (chai).
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.