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Proverbs 17: What the Passage Says

53 claims across 28 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Proverbs 17 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Proverbs 17 is a collection of short, separate sayings, most of them two lines that set one thing against another. They cover quarreling and peace in a household, wise and foolish sons, friendship and loyalty, bribes and crooked court rulings, grief brought by a foolish child, and the value of holding back words. The chapter closes with the observation that even a fool seems wise while he stays silent.

Claim by Claim

  1. 17:1
    • A dry morsel with quietness is better than a house full of sacrificial feasting with strife.
  2. 17:2
    • A prudent servant will rule over a son who acts shamefully.
    • A prudent servant will share in the inheritance among the brothers.
  3. 17:3
    • The refining pot is for silver.
    • The furnace is for gold.
    • The LORD tests hearts.
  4. 17:4
    • An evildoer pays attention to wicked lips.
    • A liar gives ear to a destructive tongue.
  5. 17:5
    • Whoever mocks the poor reproaches his Maker.
    • Whoever is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.
  6. 17:6
    • Grandchildren are the crown of the aged.
    • The glory of children is their fathers.
  7. 17:7
    • Excellent speech is not fitting for a fool.
    • Lying lips are even less fitting for a noble.
  8. 17:8
    • A bribe is like a precious stone in the eyes of its owner.
    • Wherever its owner turns, he succeeds.
  9. 17:9
    • He who covers over an offense seeks love.
    • He who repeats a matter separates close friends.
  10. 17:10
    • A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.
  11. 17:11
    • An evil man seeks only rebellion.
    • A cruel messenger will be sent against him.
  12. 17:12
    • It is better for a man to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than to meet a fool in his folly.
  13. 17:13
    • Whoever returns evil for good will not have evil depart from his house.
  14. 17:14
    • The beginning of strife is like letting out water.
    • Abandon the quarrel before it breaks out.
  15. 17:15
    • He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the LORD.
    • He who condemns the righteous is an abomination to the LORD.
    • Both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.
  16. 17:16
    • There is no purpose in a fool having money in his hand to buy wisdom, since he has no sense.
  17. 17:17
    • A friend loves at all times.
    • A brother is born for adversity.
  18. 17:18
    • A man lacking sense strikes hands in pledge.
    • A man lacking sense becomes surety in the presence of his neighbor.
  19. 17:19
    • He who loves transgression loves strife.
    • He who raises his gate high seeks destruction.
  20. 17:20
    • He who has a crooked heart finds no good.
    • He whose tongue is perverse falls into calamity.
  21. 17:21
    • He who fathers a fool does so to his own grief.
    • The father of a fool has no joy.
  22. 17:22
    • A joyful heart does good like a medicine.
    • A broken spirit dries up the bones.
  23. 17:23
    • A wicked man takes a bribe from the bosom.
    • He takes the bribe to pervert the ways of justice.
  24. 17:24
    • Wisdom is before the face of the man of understanding.
    • The eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.
  25. 17:25
    • A foolish son is a grief to his father.
    • A foolish son is bitterness to the woman who bore him.
  26. 17:26
    • To punish the righteous is not good.
    • To strike nobles for their uprightness is not good.
  27. 17:27
    • He who has knowledge restrains his words.
    • A man of understanding is of a cool spirit.
  28. 17:28
    • Even a fool who keeps silent is counted wise.
    • He who shuts his lips is considered discerning.

Words Worth Explaining

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

17:1
"Sacrifices" here does not mean a religious ritual so much as the meal that followed one. When an animal was offered, only a portion was burned; the rest was cooked and eaten by the family and guests. So "a house full of sacrifices" meant a house full of meat and celebration, the richest kind of feast an ordinary household ever saw.
17:2
The "servant" is a household slave or bonded worker, who normally owned nothing and inherited nothing. Property passed to sons only. For a servant to rule the heir and take a share alongside the sons would have struck the first hearers as a startling reversal of the ordinary order.
17:3
The "fining pot" is a crucible. Silver and gold ore were heated until the metal melted and the impurities separated out and could be skimmed away, a process that both purified the metal and revealed how much of it was genuine. The proverb applies that image to the LORD and the human heart, leaving both senses, purifying and revealing, in play.
17:4
"Naughty" in 1611 English was a strong word, not the mild one it is today: it meant wicked or good-for-nothing. The Hebrew word behind it suggests a tongue that ruins and swallows people up.
17:6
A crown was worn as a sign of honor. Calling grandchildren a crown means they are what an older person is proud to show off.
17:7
"Becometh not" means "does not suit" or "is unbecoming to." A "fool" in Proverbs is not someone of low intelligence but someone morally bent, a person who refuses correction and lives as though right and wrong do not matter. The Hebrew phrase translated "excellent speech" is itself ambiguous: it can mean fine, elevated, eloquent language, or arrogant, overblown language. "Prince" means a noble or ruler, someone with authority.
17:8
The KJV's "gift" means a bribe. The "precious stone" is a charm or amulet: ancient Near Eastern people carried engraved stones believed to bring luck and open doors. The proverb is describing how a bribe looks to the man who hands it over, magic that works every time, without saying it truly does.
17:9
"Covereth a transgression" means passing over an offense rather than exposing it. "Seeketh love" is a Hebrew idiom for promoting or fostering goodwill between people; it is not about looking for affection for oneself. "Very friends" is old English for "close friends", "very" here means genuine or intimate.
17:10
"Stripes" are lashes from a whip or rod. Flogging was a standard judicial punishment; Israelite law capped it at forty strokes, so "an hundred" is deliberate exaggeration, even a punishment beyond what the law allowed would not reach a fool as far as one word of correction reaches a person with sense.
17:11
The "cruel messenger" is an envoy or officer dispatched by a king, the man sent to arrest or execute a rebel. The Hebrew word for messenger is the same one elsewhere translated "angel," and the proverb does not specify who does the sending.
17:12
"Whelps" are cubs. Bears lived in the hill country of ancient Israel, and a mother bear separated from her cubs was the standard byword for the most dangerous thing a traveler could meet. The proverb puts the fool in the worse position of the two.
17:13
"His house" means his family and the children who come after him, not the building. Trouble like that spreads past one person.
17:14
The picture is a breach in an earthen dam or irrigation channel: once water starts through a small opening it widens the gap itself, and cannot be stopped. "Before it be meddled with" uses "meddle" in its older sense of breaking out or coming to blows, quit the argument before it bursts.
17:15
"Justifieth" and "condemneth" are courtroom words: to declare someone legally innocent and to declare someone legally guilty. The proverb is about corrupt verdicts, not private opinions. "Abomination" translates a strong Hebrew word for something detestable, used most often of practices treated as intolerable in Israel's law.
17:16
"A price in the hand" is cash, the fee paid to a teacher of wisdom, who instructed pupils for money much as any craftsman charged for training. "He hath no heart to it" uses "heart" in the Hebrew sense of the mind and will together: the fool has neither the intention nor the desire.
17:17
"Brother" carries its full ancient weight: a member of your own family, whose duty to stand by you in a crisis was simply assumed rather than chosen. The two lines can be read as saying the same thing twice or as setting friend and brother side by side; the Hebrew leaves both open.
17:18
Striking or shaking hands was the legal gesture that sealed a guarantee, the equivalent of signing a contract. "Surety" means a co-signer: a person who becomes personally liable for someone else's debt and can lose his property, and in the worst case his freedom, if the borrower defaults. "In the presence of his friend" is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean he guarantees the debt on his neighbor's behalf, or that he does it publicly, in front of him.
17:19
"He that exalteth his gate" most likely means building an unusually high or grand doorway onto your house, a conspicuous display of wealth that invited both envy and thieves. Some readers have taken "gate" as a figure for the mouth, opening it too wide; the Hebrew allows both.
17:20
"Froward" is an obsolete English word meaning crooked, twisted or contrary, the opposite of straight. "Mischief" in 1611 English meant serious harm or disaster, not a harmless prank.
17:21
"Begetteth" is an old word meaning becomes the father of.
17:22
In Hebrew thought the bones were the seat of a person's physical strength and vitality, the innermost part of the body. "Dry bones" means drained strength, a body that has lost its sap, the way a green branch does when it withers.
17:23
The "bosom" is the fold of a robe above the belt, which people used as a pocket for money and small valuables. A payment taken "out of the bosom" is one passed discreetly from inside the clothing, out of sight. "To pervert the ways of judgment" means to bend the course of a legal case away from its proper outcome.
17:25
"Her that bare him" means the mother who gave birth to him.
17:26
"Strike" means to flog or beat. "Princes" here are nobles or officials, the men who administered justice. "For equity" means because of their uprightness: punishing officials precisely for doing the honest thing.
17:27
"Of an excellent spirit" renders a Hebrew phrase that the ancient copies read two different ways: one meaning a cool or calm spirit, unheated by anger, and the other a precious or restrained one. Either way the point is temperature of temper, not quality of character in general.
17:28
"Holdeth his peace" simply means keeps quiet. It is not about peace between people.

Read Proverbs 17