How can you understand who God is?
1My child, how can I tell you
to understand who God is?
You must listen to me
and remember what I tell you.
2Listen carefully to wisdom
and try hard to understand.
3Say you want to understand
and ask how you can become wise.
4Look to find wisdom,
like some people look to find money,
and try to find understanding
as people try to find a hidden treasure.
5If you do all these things,
you will know who God is
and how to serve Him.
6Because it is the Lord
who gives wisdom to people.
He teaches them to know and to understand.
7He gives true wisdom to honest people,
and He protects people who live in the right way.
8He always helps them do what is right.
He protects the lives of the people
who belong to Him.
9If you listen to me,
you will understand how to live in the right way
and to be honest and fair.
You will always know
what is the good and right thing to do.
10Wisdom will come into your life
and you will love getting knowledge
of what is good.
11You will know what is right
or wrong and that will protect you.
You will understand what is right
and that will keep you safe.
12It will help you not to do
what is wrong. It will save you
from people who want to
deceive you with their words,
13because they are people
who have stopped living in the right way
and now they walk in the dark
and do bad things.
14They enjoy doing wrong,
and they rejoice when they can do very bad things.
15They don't know how to walk
on the right path.
They are dishonest in everything they do.
Wisdom will save you from bad women
16If you listen to me, it will save you
from sinful women,
the wives of other men who
want to have sex with you.
17A woman like that leaves the husband
that she married when she was young,
and she doesn't keep the promise
that she made before God.
18If you go to her house
you are on the way to death.
If you go with her,
you are already going to the people
that have gone to the underworld.
19People who go to her
don't come back.
They don't come back to the path of life.
20Wisdom will help you to
be good and to do what is right.
21Because it is the honest people
who will live in the land,
and people who are righteous will stay there
and will not have to go away.
22Sinners will lose their land.
Unfaithful people will not live in their land anymore,
and their enemies will take them away.
