10. Why is it, Israel, that you find yourself in an enemy land? Why have you grown old in a foreign country? You are ritually unclean, like the dead;
11. you are already counted among the dead. But why?
12. It is because you have left the source of Wisdom!
13. If you had walked in God's ways, you would have lived in peace for ever.
14. Learn where understanding, strength, and insight are to be found. Then you will know where to find a long and full life, light to guide you, and peace.
15. No one has ever found where Wisdom lives or has entered her treasure house,
16-17. and those who have tried have vanished: the rulers of the nations, those who hunted wild animals and birds for sport, those who accumulated vast fortunes of silver and gold, which everyone trusts and will do anything to get,
18. and those who worried and schemed to make money, but who left no trace of their work behind.
19. They have all disappeared and gone down to the world of the dead. Others have come along to take their place.
20. A later generation was born and lived in the land, but they too did not discover the way to knowledge. They did not find the path to Wisdom or ever reach her.
21. Their children also failed.
22. Wisdom was not found by the Canaanites. It has not been discovered by the Edomites
23. although they search after knowledge. The way to Wisdom has not been found by the merchants of Merran and Tema or by those who relate fables or by any others who seek understanding.
24. O Israel, how great is the universe in which God dwells! How vast is all that he possesses!
25. There is no end to it; there is no way to measure how wide or how high it is.
26. Here in early times the famous giants were born, a mighty race skilled in war.
27. But God did not choose them to be his people or show them the way of knowledge.
28. They died out because they had neither understanding nor insight.