Seek It Like Silver
The argument is conditional. If you go after understanding the way people dig for buried silver, then you will grasp what it means to fear our Father. What it buys is practical: protection from men who enjoy doing harm, and from a stranger with smooth words.
2 1My son, if you receive my words and store up my commandments within you, 2making your ear attentive to wisdom and turning your heart toward understanding; 3yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, 4if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5then you will understand the fear of our Father and find the knowledge of our Father. 6For our Father gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. 7He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, 8guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his faithful ones.
9Then you will understand righteousness and justice and fairness—every good path. 10For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; 11discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you, 12rescuing you from the way of evil, from men who speak twisted things, 13who abandon the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, 14who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil, 15whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.
16Wisdom will rescue you also from the forbidden woman, from the stranger with her smooth words, 17who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her Father. 18For her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the dead. 19None who go to her return, nor do they reach the paths of life.
20So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. 21For the upright will live in the land, and those of integrity will remain in it; 22but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be torn away from it.
