The Beginning of Knowledge

(Ezra 4:6-16; Esther 1:1-9; Proverbs 9:1-12)

1The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;

2To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;

3To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;

4To give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.

5A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain to wise counsels:

6To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

7The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

The Enticement of Sin

8My son, hear the instruction of your father, and forsake not the law of your mother:

9For they shall be an ornament of grace to your head, and chains about your neck.

10My son, if sinners entice you, consent you not.

11If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privately for the innocent without cause:

12Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:

13We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:

14Cast in your lot among us; let us all have one purse:

15My son, walk not you in the way with them; refrain your foot from their path:

16For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.

17Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

18And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privately for their own lives.

19So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which takes away the life of the owners thereof.

Wisdom Calls Aloud

20Wisdom cries without; she utters her voice in the streets:

21She cries in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she utters her words, saying,

22How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?

23Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit to you, I will make known my words to you.

24Because I have called, and you refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;

25But you have set at nothing all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:

26I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear comes;

27When your fear comes as desolation, and your destruction comes as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish comes on you.

28Then shall they call on me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:

29For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:

30They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.

31Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.

32For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

33But whoever listens to me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.