28
📚✭“There is certainly a mine for silver, and a place where they refine gold. 2 📚Iron is taken out of the ground, and copper is smelted from ore. 3 📚Man puts an end to darkness✭ and searches for ore in the deepest recesses, dark as the shadow of death. 4 He digs a shaft away from human habitation. In places forgotten by man’s foot, away from men, he dangles, swinging✭ back and forth. 5 📚✭Bread comes out of the earth, but underneath it is changed as by fire. 6 📚Its stones are the source of sapphires, and its dust contains gold. 7 📚✭No bird knows the path there, and the falcon’s eye has not seen it. 8 The lion’s cubs have not trodden on it, nor has the fierce lion passed along it. 9 📚He puts out his hand to the flinty rock, he overturns the mountains at their roots. 10 📚He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eye sees everything of value.
11 📚He dams up the streams from flowing, and brings what is hidden out to the light. 12 📚✭“But where is wisdom found? And where is the place of understanding?
13 📚Man does not know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living.
14 📚The deep says, ‘It is not in me.’ And the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’
15 📚It cannot be obtained for gold, nor can silver be weighed out as its price.
16 📚It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire.
17 📚Gold and crystal cannot equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold.
18 📚Coral or pearls are not to be mentioned, and the value of wisdom is above rubies.
19 📚The topaz of Ethiopia does not equal it, nor can it be valued with pure gold.
20 📚✭“From where does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding?
21 📚It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air.
22 📚Destruction and death say, ‘We have heard a report about it with our ears.’
23 📚God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.
24 📚✭For he views the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole heavens.
25 📚When he established a weight for the wind, and measured out the waters,
26 📚When he made a law for the rain, and a path for the thunderbolt,
27 📚Then he saw wisdom and declared it; he prepared it, yes, he searched out its depths.
The way to wisdom
28 📚✭And to man he said, ‘See, the fear of the LORD, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.’ ”