Proverbs 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter is a collection of short two-part sayings, most of them setting a wise or righteous person beside a foolish or wicked one. The topics include listening to correction, guarding what you say, hard work against laziness, honest and dishonest wealth, the company you keep, and the raising of children. Each saying stands on its own, and the contrast between the two halves carries the point.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • A wise son heeds his father's discipline.
   • A scoffer does not listen to rebuke.
2. 13:2
   • From the fruit of his mouth a man eats what is good.
   • The appetite of the treacherous is violence.
3. 13:3
   • He who guards his mouth preserves his life.
   • He who opens his lips wide brings ruin on himself.
4. 13:4
   • The sluggard craves and gets nothing.
   • The appetite of the diligent is richly satisfied.
5. 13:5
   • A righteous man hates a false word.
   • A wicked man acts loathsomely and brings himself to disgrace.
6. 13:6
   • Righteousness guards the one whose way is blameless.
   • Wickedness overthrows the sinner.
   • The Hebrew of the second clause can mean either that wickedness overthrows the sinner or that wickedness overturns by sin.
7. 13:7
   • There is one who makes himself out to be rich yet has nothing.
   • There is one who makes himself out to be poor yet has great wealth.
8. 13:8
   • A man's riches are the ransom for his life.
   • A poor man hears no rebuke.
9. 13:9
   • The light of the righteous rejoices.
   • The lamp of the wicked is put out.
10. 13:10
    • Strife comes only by arrogance.
    • Wisdom is with those who take counsel.
11. 13:11
    • Wealth gotten from emptiness dwindles.
    • He who gathers little by little by his own hand increases it.
12. 13:12
    • Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
    • A desire that comes is a tree of life.
13. 13:13
    • Whoever despises the word will be destroyed.
    • He who fears the commandment will be rewarded.
14. 13:14
    • The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life.
    • The teaching of the wise turns a man away from the snares of death.
15. 13:15
    • Good understanding gives favor.
    • The way of the treacherous is hard.
    • The Hebrew word for the way of the treacherous can mean hard or enduring, and the verse does not settle which.
16. 13:16
    • Every prudent man acts with knowledge.
    • A fool spreads out his folly for all to see.
17. 13:17
    • A wicked messenger falls into trouble.
    • A faithful envoy brings healing.
18. 13:18
    • Poverty and shame come to him who ignores discipline.
    • He who keeps reproof is honored.
19. 13:19
    • A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul.
    • Turning away from evil is an abomination to fools.
20. 13:20
    • He who walks with the wise becomes wise.
    • The companion of fools will suffer harm.
21. 13:21
    • Evil pursues sinners.
    • The righteous are repaid with good.
22. 13:22
    • A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.
    • The wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.
23. 13:23
    • Much food is in the tilled ground of the poor.
    • There is one who is swept away for lack of justice.
24. 13:24
    • He who withholds his rod hates his son.
    • He who loves his son disciplines him early.
25. 13:25
    • The righteous man eats to the satisfying of his appetite.
    • The belly of the wicked goes empty.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1

"Instruction" here translates a Hebrew word (musar) that covers the whole range from teaching and advice to correction and punishment; in Proverbs a father's musar is the household's training of a son. The "scorner" or mocker is a stock character in this book: not simply a rude person but someone who has made a settled habit of refusing correction, and who is treated as harder to help than a plain fool. In the Hebrew the first line has no verb at all (literally "a wise son, a father's instruction"), so translators supply "listens to" or "heeds."

13:2

"The fruit of his mouth" is a standard Hebrew image: words are treated like a crop, and what a person says produces a harvest he later has to eat. The second line uses the Hebrew word nephesh, often translated "soul" but meaning here the appetite or craving, the throat that wants food. So the two halves are matched: one person eats good things, the other has a hunger for violence.

13:4

Again nephesh, the appetite. "Made fat" is a compliment in an agricultural society where food supply was uncertain: to be fat was to be well fed, prosperous, and doing well, not overweight in the modern sense.

13:5

"Righteous" and "wicked" run through Proverbs as two standing categories of person rather than as verdicts on single acts; the righteous is the one who lives straight with God and neighbor, the wicked the one who does not. The Hebrew of the second line is blunt: the wicked man causes a stink and brings disgrace.

13:6

A sinner is a person who keeps choosing to do wrong things.

13:7

The Hebrew verbs are reflexive ("makes himself rich," "makes himself poor") and the proverb does not say why. It can be read as two poses (the man who displays wealth he does not have, and the man who hides wealth he does have), and readers in antiquity took it both ways.

13:8

Kidnapping for ransom, and fines paid to escape a legal penalty, were both realities; a wealthy man's money could buy his life back. The second line is compressed and disputed. The Hebrew word can mean either "rebuke" or "threat": either the poor man is never threatened because he has nothing worth extorting, or he never hears the warnings the rich man's money buys him. The proverb leaves it open which is the advantage and which the loss.

13:9

A lamp burning in the house was the ordinary sign that a household was alive and occupied; "putting out someone's lamp" is a Hebrew way of speaking about a family line coming to an end. The verb in the first line is unusual: it says the light of the righteous "rejoices," i.e. burns cheerfully or brightly.

13:10

"Contention" means quarreling and fighting. The "well advised" are people who ask others for advice and then actually listen.

13:11

The Hebrew word behind "vanity" (hebel) means vapor or breath, wealth that came out of nothing, whether by fraud, gambling or a windfall. The contrast is with gathering "by hand," a little at a time, which is what "steady work" renders.

13:12

"A tree of life" is a fixed image in Proverbs for something that gives strength and vitality to the person who has it. The phrase recalls the tree in the garden of Genesis, but here it works as a comparison, not a claim about that tree.

13:13

"Fears" in Hebrew idiom covers respect and serious regard, not fright; to fear a command is to treat it as carrying real weight. "The word" and "the commandment" here most naturally mean the teaching a wise person or parent gives, the same instruction verse 1 spoke of.

13:14

"Law" translates torah, which means teaching or direction generally, not statute law. A fountain, a spring of running water rather than a well, was the difference between life and death in a dry country. "Snares" are the traps a hunter sets for birds and small game: hidden, and sprung before the animal knows it.

13:15

"Favour" (Hebrew hen) is the goodwill and acceptance other people extend to you. The second line is genuinely uncertain: the Hebrew word for "hard" ('êthan) normally means enduring or permanent, and could mean either that the treacherous person's road is rough going, or that it is unchanging and never lets him off it. Some ancient translations read a different word here altogether.

13:16

"Prudent" means careful and thinking ahead. "Folly" is the King James word for foolishness.

13:17

In a world with no postal service, rulers and households did business through messengers who carried words, money and agreements in person, and everything depended on the messenger repeating the message faithfully. "Brings healing" means he heals the situation, the business between the two parties comes out whole.

13:18

"Reproof" means being told you did something wrong so you can fix it.

13:19

The word behind "disgusting" is the strong Hebrew term for something ritually or morally repellent, the reaction of physical revulsion. The two halves sit side by side without a connecting word, and the join is left for the reader: getting what you want is sweet, and that is exactly why fools will not give up what they want even when it is evil.

13:22

In Israel a family's inheritance was chiefly land, and keeping it in the family across generations was what secured descendants a place to live and farm; to leave an inheritance to grandchildren is to have held the land through your own lifetime. "Laid up" is the language of storing grain or treasure, the sinner does the saving, someone else does the eating.

13:23

One of the most obscure verses in the book. The Hebrew word rendered "plowed field" means broken ground, land newly cleared or lying fallow, poor land a poor man works. The second line says literally "swept away for lack of justice," and "justice" (mishpat) can mean either legal fairness (the poor man's crop is seized by those with power) or good judgment (it is lost through his own mismanagement). Both readings are old.

13:24

The rod is a stick, the same word used for a shepherd's staff and for a ruler's scepter; it stands for corrective discipline of a child, which in this culture included physical punishment. The King James "betimes" means early or promptly; the Hebrew verb suggests seeking someone out at dawn, hence both "early" and "diligently."

13:25

"Want" in the King James means to lack something or go without it. It is not about wishing for something.