Dedicate Yourself to Christ – Proverbs 2:1-22
2 My son, if you will accept my words, and store up my commandments within you, (2) making your ear attentive to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding; (3) indeed, if you call out for discernment and cry aloud for understanding; (4) if you seek her as one seeks for silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, (5) then you will understand the fear of Jehovah and find the knowledge of God—(6) for Jehovah gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. (7) He stores up sound wisdom for the upright so that it might be a shield for those who walk in integrity; (8) so that he may guard the paths of justice and protect the way of his saints. (9) Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity—indeed, every good path; (10) for wisdom will enter into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. (11) Discretion will watch over you and understanding will guard you, (12) to deliver you from the way of evil, from men who speak perverse things, (13) who forsake the paths of righteousness in order to walk in the ways of darkness; (14) who rejoice in doing evil, and delight in the perversity of evil; (15) whose ways are crooked and whose paths are wayward. (16) Discretion will watch over you and understanding will guard you, to deliver you from the adulteress,* the foreign woman who flatters with her words; (17) who forsakes the friend of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. (18) Her house leads down to death and her paths lead to the place of the dead.** (19) None who go to her return, nor do they reach the paths of life. (20) Discretion will watch over you and understanding will guard you, so that you may walk in the way of good men and stay on the paths of the righteous; (21) for the upright shall dwell in the land and the blameless will remain in it. (22) But the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be rooted out of it.
*Literally, “the stranger”
**Literally, “to the departed spirits”
Now proceed to the next section of this study, entitled, Exploring the Passage.
