Day 653 of 730

¹The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity. There is no one who does good.

²God looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understood, who seek after God.

³Every one of them has gone back. They have become filthy together. There is no one who does good, no, not one.

⁴Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on God?

⁵There they were in great fear, where no fear was, for God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you. You have put them to shame, because God has rejected them.

⁶Oh that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When God brings back his people from captivity, then Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.

¹My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you;

²So as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;

³Yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding;

⁴If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures:

⁵then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

⁶For the Lord gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

⁷He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity;

⁸that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his holy ones.

⁹Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path.

¹⁰For wisdom will enter into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

¹¹Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will keep you,

¹²to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things;

¹³who forsake the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;

¹⁴who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perverseness of evil;

¹⁵who are crooked in their ways, and wayward in their paths:

¹⁶To deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words;

¹⁷who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God:

¹⁸for her house leads down to death, her paths to the dead.

¹⁹None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life:

²⁰that you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.

²¹For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it.

²²But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.