| 1 |
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
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| 2 |
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
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| 3 |
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
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| 4 |
“To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
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| 22 |
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
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| 23 |
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
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| 24 |
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
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| 25 |
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
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| 26 |
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
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| 27 |
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
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| 28 |
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
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| 29 |
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
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| 30 |
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
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| 31 |
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.”
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