1My son, if you will take my words to your heart, storing up my laws in your mind; 2So that your ear gives attention to wisdom, and your heart is turned to knowledge; 3Truly, if you are crying out for good sense, and your request is for knowledge; 4If you are looking for her as for silver, and searching for her as for stored-up wealth; 5Then the fear of the Lord will be clear to you, and knowledge of God will be yours. 6For the Lord gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and reason: 7He has salvation stored up for the upright, he is a breastplate to those in whom there is no evil; 8He keeps watch on the ways which are right, and takes care of those who have the fear of him. 9Then you will have knowledge of righteousness and right acting, and upright behaviour, even of every good way. 10For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasing to your soul; 11Wise purposes will be watching over you, and knowledge will keep you; 12Giving you salvation from the evil man, from those whose words are false; 13Who give up the way of righteousness, to go by dark roads; 14Who take pleasure in wrongdoing, and have joy in the evil designs of the sinner; 15Whose ways are not straight, and whose footsteps are turned to evil: 16To take you out of the power of the strange woman, who says smooth words with her tongue; 17Who is false to the husband of her early years, and does not keep the agreement of her God in mind: 18For her house is on the way down to death; her footsteps go down to the shades: 19Those who go to her do not come back again; their feet do not keep in the ways of life: 20So that you may go in the way of good men, and keep in the footsteps of the upright. 21For the upright will be living in the land, and the good will have it for their heritage. 22But sinners will be cut off from the land, and those whose acts are false will be uprooted.
Matthew Henry's Commentary
Promises to those who seek wisdom. (1-9) The advantages of wisdom. (10-22) 1-9 Those who earnestly seek heavenly wisdom, will never complain that they have lost their labour; and the freeness of the gift does not do away the necessity of our diligence, #Joh 6:27|. Let them seek, and they shall find it; let them ask, and it shall be given them. Observe who are thus favoured. They are the righteous, on whom the image of God is renewed, which consists in righteousness. If we depend upon God, and seek to him for wisdom, he will enable us to keep the paths of judgment. 10-22 If we are truly wise, we shall be careful to avoid all evil company and evil practices. When wisdom has dominion over us, then it not only fills the head, but enters into the heart, and will preserve, both against corruptions within and temptations without. The ways of sin are ways of darkness, uncomfortable and unsafe: what fools are those who leave the plain, pleasant, lightsome paths of uprightness, to walk in such ways! They take pleasure in sin; both in committing it, and in seeing others commit it. Every wise man will shun such company. True wisdom will also preserve from those who lead to fleshly lusts, which defile the body, that living temple, and war against the soul. These are evils which excite the sorrow of every serious mind, and cause every reflecting parent to look upon his children with anxiety, lest they should be entangled in such fatal snares. Let the sufferings of others be our warnings. Our Lord Jesus deters from sinful pleasures, by the everlasting torments which follow them. It is very rare that any who are caught in this snare of the devil, recover themselves; so much is the heart hardened, and the mind blinded, by the deceitfulness of this sin. Many think that this caution, besides the literal sense, is to be understood as a caution against idolatry, and subjecting the soul to the body, by seeking any forbidden object. The righteous must leave the earth as well as the wicked; but the earth is a very different thing to them. To the wicked it is all the heaven they ever shall have; to the righteous it is the place of preparation for heaven. And is it all one to us, whether we share with the wicked in the miseries of their latter end, or share those everlasting joys that shall crown believers?