Proverbs 4

¹Children hear ye the father's discipline, and attend that you may know prudence.

²I will give you a good gift, forsake not my law.

³For I also was the son of my father, tender and as the only-begotten in my mother's sight:

⁴and he taught me, & said: Let thy heart receive my words, keep my precepts, and thou shalt live.

⁵Possess wisdom, possess prudence: forget not, neither decline from the words of my mouth.

⁶Leave her not, and she will keep thee: love her, and she will preserve thee.

⁷The beginning of wisdom, possess wisdom, and in all thy possession purchase prudence:

⁸take her quickly, and she will exalt thee: thou shalt be glorified of her, when thou shalt embrace her.

⁹She will give to thy head increase of graces, and with a noble crown she will protect thee.

¹⁰Hear my son, and receive my words, that years of life may be multiplied to thee.

¹¹The way of wisdom I will shew to thee, I will lead thee by the paths of equity.

¹²Which when thou shalt have entered, thy steps shall not be straitened, and running thou shalt not have a stumbling block.

¹³Hold discipline, leave it not: keep it, because the same is thy life.

¹⁴Be not delighted in the paths of the impious, neither let the way of the evil please thee.

¹⁵Fly from it, neither pass thou by it: go aside, and forsake it.

¹⁶For they sleep not unless they have done ill: and they take no sleep unless they supplant.

¹⁷They eat the bread of impiety, and drink the wine of iniquity.

¹⁸But the path of the just, as shining light, proceedeth even to perfect day.

¹⁹The way of the impious is darksome: they know not where they fall.

²⁰My son hear my words, and incline thine ear to my sayings.

²¹Let them not depart from thine eyes, keep them in the midst of thy heart.

²²For they are life to those that find them, and health to all flesh.

²³With all guard keep thy heart, because life proceedeth from it.

²⁴Remove from thee a froward mouth, and let detracting lips be far from thee.

²⁵Let thine eyes see right things, & let thine eye-lids go before thy steps.

²⁶Direct the path to thy feet, and all thy ways shall be established.

²⁷Decline not to the right hand, nor to the left: turn away thy foot from evil. For our Lord knoweth the ways that are on the right hand: but those are perverse, which are on the left hand. But he will make thy courses right, and thy ways he will bring forward in peace.