The Benefits of Wisdom

1My son, if you would accept my words, and conceal my commandments within you,

2so that your ears may listen to wisdom, then bend your heart in order to know prudence.

3For if you would call upon wisdom and bend your heart to prudence,

4if you will seek her like money, and dig for her as if for treasure,

5then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and you will discover the knowledge of God.

6For the Lord bestows wisdom, and out of his mouth, prudence and knowledge.

7He will preserve the salvation of the righteous, and he will protect those who walk in simplicity:

8serving the paths of justice, and guarding the ways of sanctity.

9Then you shall understand justice and judgment, and equity, and every good path.

10If wisdom is to enter into your heart, and if knowledge is to become pleasing to your soul,

11then counsel must guard you, and prudence must serve you,

12so that you may be rescued from the evil way, and from the man who speaks perversities,

13from those who leave the straight path to walk in dark ways,

14who rejoice when they have done evil, and who exult in the most wicked things.

15Their ways are perverse, and their steps are infamous.

16So may you be rescued from the foreign woman, and from the outsider, who softens her speech,

17and who leaves behind the Guide of her youth,

18and who has forgotten the covenant of her God. For her household inclines toward death, and her paths toward Hell.

19All those who enter to her will not return again, nor will they take hold of the paths of life.

20So may you walk in the good way, and keep to the difficult paths of the just.

21For those who are upright shall live upon the earth, and the simple shall continue upon it.

22Yet truly, the impious shall perish from the earth, and those who act unjustly shall be taken away from it.