1: The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;
2: To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;
3: To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
4: To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
5: A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
6: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.
7: :The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
8: My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
9: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.
10: My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.
11: If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:
12: Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:
13: We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:
14: Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse:
15: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:
16: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.
17: Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.
18: And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.
19: So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
20: Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:
21: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying,
22: How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
23: Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.
24: Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;
25: But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:
26: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
27: When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
28: Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
29: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
30: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.
31: Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
32: For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
33: But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.