CHAPTER 2 Mar. 24 
The Benefits of Wisdom
My 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 cry out for wisdom, 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 Yahweh, and find the knowledge of God. 6For Yahweh 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 saints. 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 Gentile 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 eternally remain in it. 22But the wicked will be cut off from the land, the deceitful will be rooted out of it. 

Commentary

2:3 Wisdom cries out loud to be heard (8:1), and yet the righteous man cries after wisdom, and lifts up his voice for understanding; there is thus a sense of mutuality here between God's wisdom and the sincere seeker. Every genuine believer will have felt this; we urgently cry for wisdom, and yet God's word is crying out to teach us. If this is our attitude, the things of God’s word will be our life (4:13). As Israel were to talk about the word as they went out and came in and as they walked along the way, so should the new Israel (7:2,3).
2:16,17 Solomon was inspired to write the Proverbs in his youth, and yet he did the very things he warns others against. Here he teaches that wisdom would save a man from the Gentile woman who made a covenant with the God of Israel in her youth (in order to marry an Israelite, by implication), but soon forgot it. This was exactly the case of Solomon, who married Gentile women in his youth; yet he just couldn't see the personal relevance of his own wisdom to himself. The more spiritual knowledge we have, the more prone we are to make this same mistake.