Douay Rheims Original ↷
Proverbs 8 💬 📚 📜 📕 ↷
Excellence of Wisdom
1 Doth not wisdom cry, and prudence give her voice?
2 Standing in the high & lofty tops over the way, in the midst of the paths,
3 beside the gates of the city in the very doors she speaketh, saying:
4 O men, to you I cry, and my voice is to the children of men.
5 O little ones understand subtilty, and ye unwise, mark.
6 Hear ye, because I will speak of great things: and my lips shall be opened to preach right things.
7 My throat shall meditate truth, and my lips shall detest the impious.
8 All my words are just, there is no wicked, nor perverse thing in them.
9 They are right to them that understand, and just to them that find knowledge.
10 Receive ye discipline, & not money: choose doctrine rather than gold.
11 For wisdom is better than all most precious riches: and whatsoever is to be desired can not be compared to it.
12 I wisdom dwell in counsel, and am present in learned cogitations.
13 The fear of our Lord hateth evil: arrogancy, and pride, and wicked way, and a double tongued mouth I do detest.
14 Mine is counsel & equity, prudence is mine, strength is mine.
15 By me kings do reign, and the makers of laws decree just things.
16 By me Princes rule, and the mighty decree justice.
17 I love them that love me: and they that watch toward me shall find me.
18 With me are riches, and glory, glorious riches, and justice.
19 For my fruit is better than gold and precious stone, and my blossoms than chosen silver.
20 I walk in the ways of justice, in the midst of the paths of judgment,
21 that I may enrich them that love me, and may replenish their treasures.
22 Our Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he had made any thing from the beginning.
23 From eternity I was ordained & of old before the earth was made.
24 The depths were not as yet, and I was now conceived, neither had the fountains of waters as yet gushed forth:
25 the mountains with heavy hugeness stood not as yet: before the little hills I was brought forth:
26 he had not yet made the earth, and the rivers, and the poles of the round world.
27 When he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law and circuit he compassed the depths:
28 When he established the firmament above, & poised the fountains of water:
29 when he compassed the sea with her limits, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their bounds: when he hanged the foundations of the earth,
30 I was with him framing all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all time,
31 playing in the world: & my delights to be with the children of men.
32 Now therefore children hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.
33 Hear ye discipline, and be wise, and reject it not.
34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, & that watcheth at my doors daily, & waiteth at the posts of my door.
35 He that shall find me shall find life, and shall draw salvation of our Lord:
36 but he that shall sin against me, shall hurt his own soul. All that hate me, love death.
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