12 delivering you from the way of evil,
    from men of perverted speech,
13 who forsake the paths of uprightness
    to (A)walk in the ways of darkness,
14 who (B)rejoice in doing evil
    and (C)delight in the perverseness of evil,
15 men whose (D)paths are crooked,
    (E)and who are (F)devious in their ways.

16 So (G)you will be delivered from the forbidden[a] woman,
    from (H)the adulteress[b] with (I)her smooth words,
17 who forsakes (J)the companion of her youth
    and forgets (K)the covenant of her God;
18 (L)for her house sinks down to death,
    and her paths to the departed;[c]
19 none who go to her come back,
    nor do they regain the paths of life.

20 So you will walk in the way of the good
    and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright (M)will inhabit the land,
    and those with integrity will remain in it,
22 but the wicked will be (N)cut off from the land,
    and the treacherous will be (O)rooted out of it.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Proverbs 2:16 Hebrew strange
  2. Proverbs 2:16 Hebrew foreign woman
  3. Proverbs 2:18 Hebrew to the Rephaim

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