Proverbs 13
The couplets continue, and chapter 13 leans inward - toward the heart that waits, the riches that deceive, and the company that shapes a soul. It opens, as the book so often does, with the willingness to listen: A wise son heareth his father's instruction: but a scorner heareth not rebuke (v. 1). And it quickly turns to the guarded tongue: He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction (v. 3). To learn to listen and to learn to be silent - the chapter sets both at its threshold.3
Then comes a saying that quietly unmasks the whole game of wealth: There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches (v. 7). Appearances lie in both directions - the one who looks full is empty, the one who looks empty is full - and the proverb forces the question of what real riches even are. At the chapter's center stands its most tender line: Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life (v. 12), set beside the promise that the law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death (v. 14).
The final movement turns to the people we keep close and the legacy we leave. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed (v. 20) - we drift, slowly and surely, toward those we walk with. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children (v. 22). And the chapter ends on a hard but loving note about correction: He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (v. 24) - for love that never corrects is not the kindness it pretends to be.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Proverbs 13:1-11He That Maketh Himself Poor, Yet Hath Great Riches
1A wise son heareth his father's instruction: but a scorner heareth not rebuke. 2A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth: but the soul of the transgressors shall eat violence. 3He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction. 4The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. 5A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame. 6Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way: but wickedness overthroweth the sinner.
The chapter opens by joining two disciplines the book never tires of - the open ear and the guarded mouth. A wise son heareth his father's instruction: but a scorner heareth not rebuke (v. 1); He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction (v. 3). Wisdom takes in through the ear and lets out carefully through the mouth; folly does the reverse, deaf to correction and loose with words. Verse 3 is worth fixing in memory for how high it raises the stakes: to keep your mouth is to keep your life. The image is of a gate - a guarded mouth is a guarded life, while one flung wide open invites ruin straight in. So much of the wreckage a person suffers comes through an ungoverned tongue: the word that should have stayed unsaid, the secret spilled, the retort that could not be held. Then verse 4 catches the sluggard with painful accuracy: The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing. The lazy person is not without desires - he wants plenty; he simply will not do the thing his wanting requires, and so he is left with appetite and no harvest, forever craving and never gathering. The diligent, who want and then work, are made fat. Wanting is not the problem; the gap between wanting and working is.
7There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches. 8The ransom of a man's life are his riches: but the poor heareth not rebuke. 9The light of the righteous rejoiceth: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out. 10Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom. 11Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.
Verse 7 holds up a mirror that shows two illusions at once: There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches. The proverb watches two people perform. One presents himself as wealthy - the show of success, the borrowed shine, the carefully curated abundance - and behind the display there is nothing, an empty account and an emptier soul. The other looks like he has little, makes no display, may genuinely live with modest means - and he possesses great riches, whether the unseen wealth of contentment and character or simply substance he feels no need to flaunt. The verse refuses to let us read a life off its surface. Appearances lie in both directions, and the question the proverb plants is unsettling and necessary: which of these am I? Am I spending energy to seem rich while being poor where it counts - or am I rich in the things that cannot be photographed? Verse 11 then quietly tells the truth about how durable wealth is actually built: Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase. What comes too fast and too easy - the windfall, the scheme, the shortcut - tends to leak away as quickly as it arrived; what is gathered slowly, by honest labour, a little at a time, is what lasts. The proverbs distrust the dramatic and trust the daily.
Proverbs 13:12-19Hope Deferred Maketh the Heart Sick
12Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. 13Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed: but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded. 14The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.
At the chapter's heart is one of the most psychologically true sentences in Scripture: Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life (v. 12). The first half names an experience everyone eventually knows and few find words for - the slow sickness of waiting. Not the sharp pain of loss, but the dull, grinding ache of hoping for something that keeps not coming: the answer that never arrives, the door that stays shut, the longing held so long it begins to wear the heart down. The proverb does not rebuke this or call it faithlessness. It simply tells the truth with great tenderness: deferred hope makes the heart sick. The Bible dignifies the ache by naming it. But the verse will not stop at the sickness. Its second half lifts the eyes to the other side of waiting: when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. The fulfilled longing does not merely satisfy - it revives, like water reaching the roots of a dying plant; the thing finally arriving is a tree of life, restoring what the long wait had drained. The proverb holds the two truths together without flinching: the waiting is genuinely hard, and the coming is genuinely life. It neither pretends the delay is painless nor lets the pain have the last word.
Beside the heart-sickness of waiting the chapter sets a steadying image: The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death (v. 14). The word translated law here is wisdom's teaching, the instruction of the wise - and the proverb calls it a fountain, a living spring that keeps welling up fresh. This is a crucial correction to a lie we are prone to believe: that God's instruction is a fence built to keep us from joy, a list of restrictions that narrows life. The proverb says the opposite - the teaching of the wise is not a cage but a fountain, not a limit on life but a source of it. And it works, specifically, to depart from the snares of death. The world is laid with traps - the seductions, the shortcuts, the slow self-destructions the earlier chapters warned of - and wisdom is the spring whose water draws a person up and away from them, keeping the feet clear of the snare. The two images in this section belong together. To the heart made sick by deferred hope, the fountain of life is exactly what is needed: not a denial of the ache, but a source of life to drink from while the longing waits. Wisdom does not end the waiting; it sustains the one who waits.
15Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors is hard. 16Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge: but a fool layeth open his folly. 17A wicked messenger falleth into mischief: but a faithful ambassador is health. 18Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured. 19The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.
These verses return to the chapter's opening concern - how a person responds to correction - and state its consequences with unusual clarity: Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured (v. 18). The two destinies could not be more opposite, and the hinge between them is small and daily: whether a person refuses reproof or regards it. To regard reproof is to treat it as worth attending to - to receive the hard word, weigh it, and let it work - and the proverb says this humble habit ends, of all places, in honour. The one who can be corrected rises; the one who cannot sinks toward poverty and shame. It is a striking reversal of how pride imagines things: pride believes that admitting fault is humiliating and that defending oneself preserves dignity, when in fact the reverse is true. Verse 15 adds a sobering observation about the road the un-correctable walk: the way of transgressors is hard. Sin is often imagined as the easy path and obedience as the difficult one, but the proverb has watched long enough to know better. The way that refuses wisdom is hard - rough, grinding, strewn with the wreckage of consequences - while the path of understanding wins favour. The chapter keeps insisting that the teachable life is not the constrained life but the good one.
Proverbs 13:20-25He That Walketh with Wise Men Shall Be Wise
20He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. 21Evil pursueth sinners: but to the righteous good shall be repayed. 22A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. 23Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment. 24He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. 25The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.
The chapter's most quietly decisive proverb is about the people we keep close: He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed (v. 20). Notice the verb - walketh. This is not a single choice but a direction of travel, the daily, unglamorous companionship of a shared road. And the proverb's claim is that we become like the company we keep, not by deliberate imitation but by sheer proximity. Walk with the wise - absorb their words, their instincts, their way of weighing things - and you grow wise almost without noticing, by a kind of osmosis. Keep company with fools and you are not merely endangered but, the proverb says flatly, destroyed; their normal becomes your normal, their blind spots become yours, and their road ends where yours now will too. Few of us choose our character in one dramatic decision; we drift into it, slowly, in the direction of our friends. That is why this verse is among the most practically important in the book: the long arc of a life is bent, more than by almost anything else, by who walks beside it. The proverb does not say we are merely influenced by our companions. It says we are made by them.
The chapter ends with a hard saying that the modern ear often hears wrongly: He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (v. 24). The proverb's deep concern is not a technique of punishment but the nature of love itself, and it makes a claim that runs against our instincts: that the parent who never corrects is not, in fact, the loving one. We are tempted to equate love with the absence of all discomfort - to imagine that letting a child do as he pleases, sparing him every hard consequence, is kindness. The proverb calls that bluff. A love that will not correct, that cannot bear to cause its child a moment's pain even for the child's good, is revealed as a subtler form of hatred - or at least of self-interest, more concerned with the parent's comfort than the child's formation. Real love is willing to be momentarily resented for the sake of a person's long good; it corrects betimes - early, in time, before a small fault hardens into a ruling one. The principle reaches far past parenting. To love anyone well is sometimes to tell them what they do not want to hear, to risk the relationship's ease for the relationship's good. And, as the next chapters of Scripture will make plain, it is exactly how God Himself loves - for the discipline that feels like severity is the surest evidence that we are dealt with as children, not strangers.
Further study
- The Hebrew of Proverbs 13 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and the classical commentators - useful for tocheleth (v. 12, the “hope” that, deferred, sickens the heart) and for musar (vv. 1, 18, 24, the “instruction” / “discipline” that runs through the chapter, joining teaching and loving correction in one word).
- Proverbs 13 ↔ Colossians 1 · John 4 · Hebrews 12Intertextual BibleTraces the chapter's threads into the New Testament - the hope that, fulfilled, is a tree of life (v. 12) in Christ… the hope of glory (Col. 1:27), the fountain of life (v. 14) in the living water of John 4:14, and the loving correction of verse 24 in whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth (Heb. 12:6).
- Proverbs 13 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's footnotes on Proverbs 13 - the paradox of false and true riches (v. 7), the heart-sickness of deferred hope (v. 12), the “fountain of life” image (v. 14), and the proverb on a father's correction (v. 24).
Where this echoes in Scripture
He That Maketh Himself Poor, Yet Hath Great Riches
- James 1:19Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.The open ear and guarded mouth of verses 1 and 3 - wisdom that listens much and speaks carefully.
- 2 Corinthians 6:10...as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.The paradox of verse 7 lived out by the apostle - outwardly poor, inwardly possessing everything.
- Luke 12:15A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.The truth beneath verse 7 - that real wealth is not measured by display.
Hope Deferred Maketh the Heart Sick
- Colossians 1:27...which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.The desire that, come, is a tree of life (v. 12) - the hope that finally cannot disappoint.
- Romans 8:24-25For we are saved by hope... if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.The deferred hope of verse 12 transformed - a waiting that is sure of its end.
- John 4:14...the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.The fountain of life (v. 14) named in person - living water for the one who drinks.
- Psalm 19:7-8The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul... the statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart.The law of the wise as a fountain of life (v. 14) - instruction that gives life rather than constrains it.
He That Walketh with Wise Men Shall Be Wise
- 1 Corinthians 15:33Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.The warning of verse 20 - the company of fools quietly corrupting the one who keeps it.
- Luke 24:15, 32Jesus himself drew near, and went with them... Did not our heart burn within us... while he opened to us the scriptures?The wisest walking of all (v. 20) - the road traveled in company with the wisdom of God.
- Hebrews 12:5-11For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth... afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.The loving correction of verse 24 lifted to its highest case - the Father who disciplines those He loves.
- Proverbs 22:6Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.The early, loving formation behind verse 24 - correction that shapes a life in time.