Chapter 2

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.