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Proverbs 22: What the Passage Says

59 claims across 29 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Proverbs 22 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The first half of the chapter continues the short two-line sayings of Solomon, on a good name, wealth and poverty, generosity, laziness, and raising children. At verse 17 a new section begins, called the words of the wise, addressed to a student in the second person. It urges him to take these teachings in, and then turns to the poor, hot-tempered friends, guaranteeing debts, boundary markers, and what becomes of a man skilled at his work.

Claim by Claim

  1. 22:1
    • A good name is to be preferred over great riches.
    • Favor is better than silver and gold.
  2. 22:2
    • The rich and the poor meet together.
    • The LORD is the maker of both the rich and the poor.
  3. 22:3
    • The prudent man sees evil coming and hides himself.
    • The simple pass on ahead.
    • The simple are punished.
  4. 22:4
    • Humility and the fear of the LORD bring riches, honor, and life.
    • It is ambiguous whether the fear of the LORD is itself the reward of humility, or whether humility and the fear of the LORD together bring the reward.
  5. 22:5
    • Thorns and snares lie in the way of the crooked man.
    • He who guards his own soul will keep far from them.
  6. 22:6
    • Train up a child according to the way he should go.
    • When he is old he will not turn from it.
  7. 22:7
    • The rich rules over the poor.
    • The borrower is a slave to the lender.
  8. 22:8
    • He who sows injustice will reap trouble.
    • The rod of his wrath will fail.
  9. 22:9
    • The man with a generous eye will be blessed.
    • He gives of his bread to the poor.
  10. 22:10
    • Drive out the scoffer and contention goes out.
    • Quarreling and dishonor cease.
  11. 22:11
    • He who loves purity of heart and has gracious speech has the king as his friend.
  12. 22:12
    • The eyes of the LORD guard knowledge.
    • The LORD overthrows the words of the treacherous man.
  13. 22:13
    • The sluggard says there is a lion outside.
    • The sluggard says he will be killed in the open squares.
  14. 22:14
    • The mouth of forbidden women is a deep pit.
    • The man cursed by the LORD falls into it.
  15. 22:15
    • Folly is bound up in the heart of a child.
    • The rod of discipline drives folly far from the child.
  16. 22:16
    • He who oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth will come to want.
    • He who gives to the rich will come to want.
  17. 22:17
    • Incline your ear.
    • Hear the words of the wise.
    • Set your heart on my knowledge.
  18. 22:18
    • It is pleasant if you keep these words within you.
    • They will be fixed together on your lips.
  19. 22:19
    • The purpose is that your trust may be in the LORD.
    • I have made this known to you today.
    • I have made it known to you yourself.
  20. 22:20
    • I have written to you in counsels and knowledge.
    • It is ambiguous whether what was written is thirty sayings or excellent things.
  21. 22:21
    • The purpose is to make you know the certainty of the words of truth.
    • The purpose is that you may return true words to those who send you.
  22. 22:22
    • Do not rob the poor man because he is poor.
    • Do not crush the afflicted in the gate.
  23. 22:23
    • The LORD will plead their cause.
    • The LORD will rob the life of those who rob them.
  24. 22:24
    • Do not make friendship with a man given to anger.
    • Do not go with a man of wrath.
  25. 22:25
    • Otherwise you will learn his ways.
    • Otherwise you will take a snare for your soul.
  26. 22:26
    • Do not be one of those who strike hands in pledge.
    • Do not be one of those who become surety for debts.
  27. 22:27
    • If you have nothing with which to pay, your bed will be taken from under you.
  28. 22:28
    • Do not move the ancient boundary marker.
    • Your fathers set that boundary marker.
  29. 22:29
    • A man skilled in his work will stand before kings.
    • He will not stand before obscure men.

Words Worth Explaining

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

22:1
In Bible times a person's name stood for their whole reputation. A "good name" meant people trusted you.
22:2
"The LORD" in big letters stands for God's own name. The people of Israel used that name when they spoke about God.
22:3
"Simple" in Proverbs is not an insult about intelligence. It is a standing term for the untrained person, young, inexperienced, easily talked into things, and still able to learn. "Prudent" is its opposite: someone who has learned to read a situation.
22:4
"The fear of the LORD" is a fixed phrase running through Proverbs; it means reverence and awe rather than fright. The Hebrew line is compressed and can be read two ways: humility and the fear of the LORD as two things that bring riches, honor and life, or the fear of the LORD as what humility actually consists of.
22:5
"Froward" is old English for twisted or perverse, a person who goes crooked rather than straight. It has nothing to do with being forward or bold.
22:6
The Hebrew reads literally "train a boy according to his way," and has long been understood two ways: according to the way he ought to go, or according to his own bent, his particular character and stage of life. The verb translated "train up" is elsewhere used of dedicating a new house to its use.
22:7
Debt slavery was a real institution, not a figure of speech. A person who could not repay could be bound to work off the debt for the lender, and children could be handed over in the same way.
22:8
"Vanity" in the King James Version means emptiness or nothingness, not conceit. The "rod of his anger" is the stick he uses to beat others, standing for his power to do harm.
22:9
The Hebrew says literally "good of eye." A good eye meant a generous one; an evil eye, elsewhere in Proverbs, meant a grudging or stingy one. It is not about eyesight or the evil eye of later folklore.
22:10
The "scorner" or mocker is one of Proverbs' recurring character types, alongside the wise, the fool and the simple. He is defined not by ignorance but by refusing correction and ridiculing anyone who offers it.
22:11
Kings picked their close helpers from people they trusted. Being the king's friend meant a real job at the palace.
22:13
Lions did live in the Jordan valley and the scrubland of ancient Israel, so the danger was not imaginary in open country, but not in the streets of a town in daylight.
22:14
"Strange women" does not mean odd or foreign. The Hebrew means a woman who belongs to another man, outside the boundary of one's own marriage. The same phrasing appears throughout the early chapters of Proverbs.
22:15
The rod is the household stick used in disciplining a child. The same Hebrew word covers a shepherd's staff and a ruler's scepter.
22:16
The second half of this proverb is terse in Hebrew and disputed. It can be read as saying both the oppressor and the flatterer of the rich end in poverty, or that giving gifts to the already-rich is itself a straight loss.
22:17
A new collection begins here and runs to 24:22, headed "the words of the wise", no longer the short two-line proverbs of the previous chapters but longer instructions addressed to a pupil. This section closely parallels an Egyptian teaching text, the Instruction of Amenemope, written for young men entering royal service.
22:18
Books were rare and expensive. People learned sayings by heart so the words were ready to speak when they were needed.
22:20
The Hebrew word behind "excellent things" is uncertain, and ancient copies differ. Read one way it means "formerly" or "in time past"; another, "officers" or "noble things"; another, "thirty", which would match the thirty chapters of the Egyptian instruction text this section resembles.
22:21
The person being taught appears to be a young man in someone's service, sent out with a message and expected to come back with a dependable report, the setting of a court or household official in training.
22:22
The gate was the open area just inside a city's wall where elders heard lawsuits, contracts were witnessed and business was done. It was the town's courtroom, and "in the gate" marks this as a legal wrong, not just a private one.
22:23
"Plead their cause" is courtroom language, continuing the picture of the previous verse: the LORD takes the part of a legal advocate for people who have no one to speak for them.
22:26
Striking or clasping hands was the gesture that sealed a binding guarantee, standing surety, promising to pay another person's debt if they defaulted. It carried the force of a signature.
22:27
A creditor could seize a defaulter's property. Bedding was often the last thing a poor household owned, and Israelite law required that a cloak taken as a pledge be returned before nightfall so its owner could sleep in it.
22:28
Boundary stones marked the edge of family land, which passed down through generations and was not meant to be sold off permanently. Quietly shifting a stone stole a neighbor's land and was almost impossible to prove afterward.
22:29
"Mean men" in 1611 English meant men of low rank or no standing, not cruel men. "Stand before" is the idiom for serving in someone's presence, being on the staff of a king rather than of nobodies.

Read Proverbs 22