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and store up my commands within you,
2 making your ear attentive to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding;
3 if you truly cry out for insight
and lift up your voice for understanding;
4 if you seek it like silver
and search for it like hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom,
and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7 He stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
He is a shield for those whose walk is upright,
8 for He guards the paths of justice,
and protects the way of His faithful ones.
9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and what is fair—every good path.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11 Discretion will protect you,
12 Wisdom will rescue you from the way of evil,
from men who say perverse things,
13 who leave the straight paths
to walk in the ways of darkness,
14 who rejoice in doing wrong,
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
15 whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
16 You will be rescued from the loose woman,
from the adulteress with her seductive words,
17 who abandons the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God.
18 For her house leads down to death
and her paths to the dead.
19 None who go to her return again;
none regain the paths of life.
20 So 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 the blameless will remain in it;
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be torn from it.