1. Hear therefore, O ye kings, and understand; learn, ye that be judges of the ends of the earth.

2. Give ear, ye that rule the people, and glory in the multitude of nations.

3. For power is given you of the Lord, and sovereignty from the Highest, who shall try your works, and search out your counsels.

4. Because, being ministers of his kingdom, ye have not judged aright, nor kept the law, nor walked after the counsel of God;

5. Horribly and speedily shall he come upon you: for a sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.

6. For mercy will soon pardon the meanest: but mighty men shall be mightily tormented.

7. For he which is Lord over all shall fear no man’s person, neither shall he stand in awe of any man’s greatness: for he hath made the small and great, and careth for all alike.

8. But a sore trial shall come upon the mighty.

9. Unto you therefore, O kings, do I speak, that ye may learn wisdom, and not fall away.

10. For they that keep holiness holily shall be judged holy: and they that have learned such things shall find what to answer.

11. Wherefore set your affection upon my words; desire them, and ye shall be instructed.

12. Wisdom is glorious, and never fadeth away: yea, she is easily seen of them that love her, and found of such as seek her.

13. She preventeth them that desire her, in making herself first known unto them.

14. Whoso seeketh her early shall have no great travail: for he shall find her sitting at his doors.

15. To think therefore upon her is perfection of wisdom: and whoso watcheth for her shall quickly be without care.

16. For she goeth about seeking such as are worthy of her, sheweth herself favourably unto them in the ways, and meeteth them in every thought.

17. For the very true beginning of her is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love;

18. And love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption;

19. And incorruption maketh us near unto God:

20. Therefore the desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom.

21. If your delight be then in thrones and sceptres, O ye kings of the people, honour wisdom, that ye may reign for evermore.

22. As for wisdom, what she is, and how she came up, I will tell you, and will not hide mysteries from you: but will seek her out from the beginning of her nativity, and bring the knowledge of her into light, and will not pass over the truth.

23. Neither will I go with consuming envy; for such a man shall have no fellowship with wisdom.

24. But the multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world: and a wise king is the upholding of the people.

25. Receive therefore instruction through my words, and it shall do you good.

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.