Get Wisdom, and Guard Your Heart
1 Listen, sons, to a father’s instruction. Pay attention and know understanding; 2 for I give you sound learning. Don’t forsake my law. 3 For I was a son to my father, tender and an only child in the sight of my mother. 4 He taught me, and said to me: “Let your heart retain my words. Keep my commandments, and live. 5 Get wisdom. Get understanding. Don’t forget, and don’t deviate from the words of my mouth. 6 Don’t forsake her, and she will preserve you. Love her, and she will keep you. 7 Wisdom is supreme. Get wisdom. Yes, though it costs all your possessions, get understanding. 8 Esteem her, and she will exalt you. She will bring you to honor when you embrace her. 9 She will give to your head a garland of grace. She will deliver a crown of splendor to you.” 10 Listen, my son, and receive my sayings. The years of your life will be many. 11 I have taught you in the way of wisdom. I have led you in straight paths. 12 When you go, your steps will not be hampered. When you run, you will not stumble. 13 Take firm hold of instruction. Don’t let her go. Keep her, for she is your life. 14 Don’t enter into the path of the wicked. Don’t walk in the way of evil men. 15 Avoid it, and don’t pass by it. Turn from it, and pass on. 16 For they don’t sleep unless they do evil. Their sleep is taken away, unless they make someone fall. 17 For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. 18 But the path of the righteous is like the dawning light that shines more and more until the perfect day. 19 The way of the wicked is like darkness. They don’t know what they stumble over. 20 My son, attend to my words. Turn your ear to my sayings. 21 Let them not depart from your eyes. Keep them in the center of your heart. 22 For they are life to those who find them, and health to their whole body. 23 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life. 24 Put away from yourself a perverse mouth. Put corrupt lips far from you. 25 Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. 26 Make the path of your feet level. Let all of your ways be established. 27 Don’t turn to the right hand nor to the left. Remove your foot from evil.
A father passes on what his own father told him, and the chapter ends by working outward from the heart through the mouth, eyes and feet.
The chapter opens by making the instruction three generations deep. I was a son to my father, tender and an only child in the sight of my mother. He taught me — and what he taught is then quoted directly. The father speaking is passing on words he received as a boy, which is the first time the book shows its own transmission at work. Whatever authority this material has, it is presented as having been handed down and kept.
What the grandfather said is stated with an urgency that borders on repetition: Get wisdom. Get understanding. The verb is commercial — acquire it, obtain it, pay whatever it costs. And the strangest line in the chapter follows: Wisdom is supreme. Get wisdom. Yes, though it costs all your possessions, get understanding. A man who has spent his life acquiring is told what the price is, and that the acquisitions were the wrong ones unless this was among them.
The two paths are then drawn with an image that turns on light. The path of the righteous is like the dawning light that shines more and more until the perfect day — a gradual brightening that a traveler barely notices. The way of the wicked is like darkness, and the sentence added about it is the sharpest observation in the chapter: They don't know what they stumble over. The wicked are not described as knowingly self-destructive. They cannot see the obstacle, and that is the condition itself rather than its punishment.
The close of the chapter is an anatomy lesson, and its order is the argument. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life. Then, working outward: put away a perverse mouth and corrupt lips, let your eyes look straight ahead, make the path of your feet level, turn neither right nor left. Heart, mouth, eyes, feet.
That sequence is the book's whole method in one paragraph. The heart is guarded first because everything downstream flows from it, and the word for wellspring makes the point — you do not clean a stream by working on the water. But the outer members are not thereby ignored. The chapter names four of them and gives each a specific instruction, on the assumption that a man who watches his mouth and his eyes and where he puts his feet is doing something real about his heart, and not merely managing appearances.
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