- My son, if you would accept my words, and conceal my commandments within you
- so that your ears may listen to wisdom, then bend your heart in order to know prudence
- For if you would call upon wisdom and bend your heart to prudence
- if you will seek her like money, and dig for her as if for treasure
- then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and you will discover the knowledge of God
- For the Lord bestows wisdom, and out of his mouth, prudence and knowledge
- He will preserve the salvation of the righteous, and he will protect those who walk in simplicity
- serving the paths of justice, and guarding the ways of sanctity
- Then you shall understand justice and judgment, and equity, and every good path
- If wisdom is to enter into your heart, and if knowledge is to become pleasing to your soul
- then counsel must guard you, and prudence must serve you
- so that you may be rescued from the evil way, and from the man who speaks perversities
- from those who leave the straight path to walk in dark ways
- who rejoice when they have done evil, and who exult in the most wicked things
- Their ways are perverse, and their steps are infamous
- So may you be rescued from the foreign woman, and from the outsider, who softens her speech
- and who leaves behind the Guide of her youth
- and who has forgotten the covenant of her God. For her household inclines toward death, and her paths toward Hell
- All those who enter to her will not return again, nor will they take hold of the paths of life
- So may you walk in the good way, and keep to the difficult paths of the just
- For those who are upright shall live upon the earth, and the simple shall continue upon it
- Yet truly, the impious shall perish from the earth, and those who act unjustly shall be taken away from it