1. Instead of a friend become not an enemy; for thereby thou shalt inherit an ill name, shame, and reproach: even so shall a sinner that hath a double tongue.

2. Extol not thyself in the counsel of thine own heart; that thy soul be not torn in pieces as a bull straying alone.

3. Thou shalt eat up thy leaves, and lose thy fruit, and leave thyself as a dry tree.

4. A wicked soul shall destroy him that hath it, and shall make him to be laughed to scorn of his enemies.

5. Sweet language will multiply friends: and a fairspeaking tongue will increase kind greetings.

6. Be in peace with many: nevertheless have but one counsellor of a thousand.

7. If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first and be not hasty to credit him.

8. For some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of thy trouble.

9. And there is a friend, who being turned to enmity, and strife will discover thy reproach.

10. Again, some friend is a companion at the table, and will not continue in the day of thy affliction.

11. But in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be bold over thy servants.

12. If thou be brought low, he will be against thee, and will hide himself from thy face.

13. Separate thyself from thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends.

14. A faithfull friend is a strong defence: and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure.

15. Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is invaluable.

16. A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the Lord shall find him.

17. Whoso feareth the Lord shall direct his friendship aright: for as he is, so shall his neighbour be also.

18. My son, gather instruction from thy youth up: so shalt thou find wisdom till thine old age.

19. Come unto her as one that ploweth and soweth, and wait for her good fruits: for thou shalt not toil much in labouring about her, but thou shalt eat of her fruits right soon.

20. She is very unpleasant to the unlearned: he that is without understanding will not remain with her.

21. She will lie upon him as a mighty stone of trial; and he will cast her from him ere it be long.

22. For wisdom is according to her name, and she is not manifest unto many.

23. Give ear, my son, receive my advice, and refuse not my counsel,

24. And put thy feet into her fetters, and thy neck into her chain.

25. Bow down thy shoulder, and bear her, and be not grieved with her bonds.

12 more verses…

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.