Wisdom

¹Love righteousness, all you who are judges of the earth. Think of the Lord with a good mind. Seek him in singleness of heart, ²because he is found by those who don’t put him to the test, and is manifested to those who trust him. ³for crooked thoughts separate from God. His Power convicts when it is tested, and exposes the foolish; ⁴because wisdom will not enter into a soul that devises evil, nor dwell in a body that is enslaved by sin. ⁵For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will depart from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be ashamed when unrighteousness has come in. ⁶For wisdom is a spirit who loves man, and she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips, because God is witness of his inmost self, and is a true overseer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. ⁷Because the spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said. ⁸Therefore no one who utters unrighteous things will be unseen; neither will Justice, when it convicts, pass him by. ⁹For in his counsels the ungodly will be searched out, and the sound of his words will come to the Lord to bring his lawless deeds to conviction; ¹⁰because a jealous ear listens to all things, and the noise of murmurings is not hidden. ¹¹Beware then of unprofitable murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret utterance will go on its way void, and a lying mouth destroys a soul. ¹²Don’t court death in the error of your life. Don’t draw destruction upon yourselves by the works of your hands; ¹³because God didn’t make death, neither does he delight when the living perish. ¹⁴For he created all things that they might have being. The generative powers of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor has Hades royal dominion upon earth; ¹⁵for righteousness is immortal,

¹⁶but ungodly men by their hands and their words summon death; deeming him a friend they pined away. They made a covenant with him, because they are worthy to belong with him.