Proverbs 22
After eleven chapters of two-line couplets, Proverbs 22 opens with one of the book's great verdicts on what is worth having: A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold (v. 1). It is a deliberate reversal of the world's reflex. Wealth is the thing most people spend their lives chasing and guarding; here it is set on a scale opposite a good name - one's reputation, the character one is known for - and found to weigh less. The next verse sets every reader on the same footing: The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all (v. 2). However far apart their fortunes, both came from one Maker, and before Him the gap between them shrinks to nothing.3
The chapter gathers a cluster of the book's most practical wisdom. The prudent see trouble coming and step aside (v. 3); humility and the fear of the LORD bring riches, and honour, and life (v. 4); and the most famous line of all sets out the weight of early formation: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (v. 6). Wealth and poverty are weighed again - the borrower is servant to the lender (v. 7) - and generosity is pronounced blessed: He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor (v. 9). Through it all runs a quiet insistence that how a person treats the weak, and what they do when no one compels them, is the truest measure of their wisdom.
At verse 17 the book turns a corner. A new collection opens with its own heading - the words of the wise - and the tone shifts from short proverbs to direct, sustained appeal: Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge (v. 17). The aim of all this teaching is named outright: That thy trust may be in the LORD (v. 19). What follows is a string of charges - do not rob the poor, for the LORD will plead their cause (vv. 22-23); make no friendship with an angry man (v. 24); do not stand surety for another's debts (vv. 26-27); do not move the ancient landmark (v. 28) - and a closing portrait of the diligent worker who shall stand before kings (v. 29).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Proverbs 22:1-9A Good Name Is Rather to Be Chosen
1A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold. 2The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all. 3A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished. 4By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life. 5Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that doth keep his soul shall be far from them. 6Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. 7The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. 8He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail. 9He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor.
The chapter opens with a weighing, and the lighter pan is the one most people are sure is heavier: A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold (v. 1). A good name is not fame or a polished image; it is the settled reputation a person earns over years - what others know to be true of your character when your back is turned. The proverb sets that against great riches and silver and gold, the very things a person is most tempted to spend a life acquiring, and says plainly which is worth more. The reasons are not hard to find. Wealth is fragile: it can be stolen, lost in a bad season, or squandered in a single foolish decision. A good name, once truly established, is portable and durable - it goes before you into rooms you have not entered, opens doors money cannot buy, and remains when the money is gone. The second line presses the same point through relationships: loving favour, the genuine regard of others, is better than gold. Not the favour that is purchased or flattered into being, but the esteem freely given to a person of real integrity. The chapter begins, then, by quietly resetting the reader's scale of values before it says anything else.1
The next verse drops a single, leveling line into the middle of all this talk of riches: The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all (v. 2). In a world that sorts people relentlessly by what they own, the proverb names the one place the sorting collapses. The rich man and the poor man meet together - they share the same humanity, walk the same streets, and stand on the same ground before the same God - because the LORD is the maker of both. The verse does not flatter the poor or condemn the rich; it simply removes the foundation from under any pride that imagines wealth makes a person more. Both came from one Maker; both are equally His handiwork; both will answer to Him. This single thought reorders everything around it. It steadies the poor man, who is no less God's creature for being poor, and it humbles the rich man, who is no more God's creature for being rich. And it lays a moral obligation across the rest of the chapter: since the poor man bears the image of the same God who made you, how you treat him is not a private matter between unequals - it is dealing with someone your Maker also made.
Verses 3 through 5 gather the practical instincts of the wise. A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished (v. 3) - wisdom is partly the simple ability to see trouble coming and step out of its path, where the naive walk straight into it and pay the price. Then the chapter names the soil all true riches grow from: By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life (v. 4). It is a striking pairing. Humility - a right, lowly estimate of oneself - and the fear of the LORD - reverent awe before God - are joined as a single root, and from that root grow the very things the proud man grasps after by other means: riches, and honour, and life. The proverb is not promising that every humble person grows wealthy; it is teaching that the durable forms of riches, honour, and life are bound up with bowing low before God, not with self-exaltation. And verse 5 marks the alternative path as one of self-inflicted pain: Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward - the crooked road is booby-trapped, and the one who keeps his soul stays far from it. The reverent and lowly walk a cleaner road than the proud can find.
At the heart of the section stands the book's most quoted line on raising the young: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (v. 6). The verse is best read not as an iron guarantee but as a statement about how formation works. Train up renders a verb whose root sense is to dedicate or to start something on its course - to set a young life moving in a direction early, before its habits have hardened. The phrase in the way he should go has been understood to point at the path of wisdom and righteousness a child ought to walk, and also - given the Hebrew - at the particular bent and nature of the individual child, so that training is shaped to this child rather than imposed as one mould on all. Either way the promise that follows is about the deep grain laid down early: when he is old, he will not depart from it. What is built into the young when they are most pliable tends to set, becoming the channel the personality runs in for decades. The proverb does not deny that a person can later turn aside - Proverbs everywhere honors human choice - but it insists that early formation cuts deep, and so the work of shaping a child toward wisdom is among the weightiest tasks a person can take up.3
The chapter turns back to wealth and poverty with two sober observations. The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender (v. 7) states a hard fact of life without celebrating it: money is power, and debt is a kind of servitude. The one who borrows places himself under the one who lends, and the proverb names this plainly so the reader will count the cost before taking on a debt that will bind him. It is observation more than command - this is simply how the world tends to run - but its quiet warning is unmistakable: do not rush to make yourself another man's servant. Then verse 8 traces the longer arc of injustice: He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail. The image is agricultural and certain - what a man plants, he harvests. Sow wrongdoing, and the crop is emptiness; the very rod with which a harsh man tyrannizes others will one day break in his hand. The wise man, seeing this, does not envy the oppressor's present power, knowing the harvest is already on its way.
The section closes on an image of open-handedness: He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor (v. 9). The Hebrew speaks literally of one who is good of eye - an idiom for the generous person, the one whose gaze on others is kind and giving rather than grasping. (Its opposite, the evil eye elsewhere in Proverbs, is the stingy, covetous look that hoards.) The bountiful-eyed person is pronounced blessed, and the reason given is concrete and humble: he giveth of his bread to the poor. Not surplus he will never miss, but bread - daily, ordinary provision shared with one who has none. The proverb ties blessing directly to this kind of giving, in keeping with the book's wider conviction that to be generous to the poor is to lend to the LORD, who repays. There is a beautiful economy hidden here: the one who looks on the needy with a generous eye and opens his hand does not end up poorer for it but blessed. What is given away to the poor is, in God's accounting, not lost but kept.
Proverbs 22:10-16Cast Out the Scorner · The Eyes of the LORD
10Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease. 11He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend. 12The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the words of the transgressor. 13The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets. 14The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein. 15Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. 16He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.
This middle cluster opens with a piece of plain communal wisdom: Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease (v. 10). The scorner is one of the book's recurring figures - not merely a person who disagrees, but the mocker who despises correction and sneers at what is good. The proverb makes a clear-eyed observation about such a person's effect on a group: where the scorner stays, strife stays. He is the source of the contention, and removing him removes the quarrels, the bitterness, and the reproach that follow him around. There is hard mercy in this. A community, a family, or a workplace can spend itself endlessly trying to manage the conflict a single contemptuous person generates, when the wise course is to recognize the source. Verse 11 then turns to the opposite kind of person, the one others gladly keep near: He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend. Inner purity and gracious speech go together - a clean heart that overflows in kind, honest words - and such a person earns a welcome at the highest tables. The two verses together quietly sort people by their effect on those around them: the scorner is cast out, the pure in heart is drawn in.
At the center of the cluster stands a verse about God's own watchfulness: The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the words of the transgressor (v. 12). The picture is of the LORD's gaze actively at work in the world - not a distant, passive looking, but a watching that preserves and overthrows. What the LORD guards is knowledge - truth, the real state of things - keeping it from being lost or buried. And what He overturns is the words of the transgressor: the lies, the slander, the crooked testimony by which the wicked try to bend reality to their advantage. The verse gives the reader a deep ground for honesty. In a world where falsehood often seems to win the day, where a confident lie can outrun a quiet truth, this proverb insists that the LORD Himself stands behind truth and against the lie. The transgressor's words may flourish for a season, but they are set against the watching eyes of God, and in the end they are overthrown. To love truth, then, is to stand with the grain of how the world is actually governed; to trade in lies is to set one's words against the eyes of the LORD.
The cluster gathers three more sharp observations. The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets (v. 13) - a small, almost comic portrait of the lazy man, who manufactures a wildly improbable danger (a lion loose in the city!) rather than admit he simply does not want to work. Excuses, the proverb knows, grow most lush where the will is weakest. Verse 14 returns to a warning sounded throughout the book's early chapters: The mouth of strange women is a deep pit - the seductive, flattering speech that lures a man toward ruin is a hole he does not see until he has fallen in. Then comes a frank word about the young: Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him (v. 15). The proverb does not sentimentalize childhood: folly is bound there, tied in, native to the untrained heart - which is precisely why the loving formation of verse 6 is needed, why a child must be trained rather than left to follow its own bent. Loving correction is here pictured as setting a child free from a folly that would otherwise hold him fast. And verse 16 closes the cluster by returning to the chapter's concern for the poor, with a warning that exploiting the weak to enrich oneself ends, by God's reckoning, in want.
Proverbs 22:17-29The Words of the Wise · That Thy Trust May Be in the LORD
17Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge. 18For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips. 19That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee. 20Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge, 21That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee? 22Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: 23For the LORD will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them. 24Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: 25Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul. 26Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. 27If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee? 28Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. 29Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.
At verse 17 the book turns a corner. The long parade of two-line couplets gives way to a new collection with its own heading - the words of the wise - and the voice shifts to direct, sustained appeal: Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge (v. 17). The summons is whole-bodied: bow down thine ear to listen, and apply thine heart to take it in. Wisdom is not received by passive overhearing; it asks for a leaning-in, a deliberate bending of attention. The teacher then describes the sweetness and the use of keeping these words: it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips (v. 18). Truth lodged deep within becomes ready on the tongue - what is treasured in the heart is what comes out, fittingly, when it is needed. The teacher presses the seriousness of what is being handed over: Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge, that I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth (vv. 20-21). These are not idle sayings but excellent things, given so the hearer might know the certainty of what is true and be able to answer truly when others ask. Wisdom received is meant to be wisdom passed on.3
At the head of this new collection stands a single sentence that names the aim of everything that follows: That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee (v. 19). It is worth pausing on. All the practical instruction - about money and speech and anger and the poor - is not an end in itself; it is given so that the hearer's trust might rest where it belongs, in the LORD. Wisdom is not finally a technique for managing life on one's own terms; its deepest purpose is to anchor the heart in God. And the address is strikingly personal: even to thee. The teacher does not speak to a faceless crowd but presses the knowledge into the hands of the individual reader, as if to say, this is for you. The same trust then reappears as the ground of the chapter's charge to defend the poor: For the LORD will plead their cause (v. 23). The one who trusts the LORD can leave the vindication of the helpless in His hands, because God Himself takes up their case. Trust in the LORD is thus both the goal of wisdom and the security from which the wise act - freed from grasping and self-defense, because their confidence is fixed on the One who keeps and pleads for His own.
The first charge of the new collection guards the powerless: Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: for the LORD will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them (vv. 22-23). The wording is pointed. To rob a man because he is poor - precisely because he is too weak to resist or retaliate - is named as a special cowardice, and the gate, where justice was administered in an ancient town, is named as the very place the affliction so often happened: the courts twisted against those with no money to defend themselves. But the proverb does not leave the poor undefended. Behind the helpless man stands the LORD Himself as advocate - the LORD will plead their cause - and He will spoil the soul of those who spoiled them, repaying the plunderer in his own coin. The warning is grave: to prey on the weak is not merely to harm a person who cannot fight back; it is to pick a fight with their Maker, who has appointed Himself their attorney. The following verses turn to other dangers - the contagion of a hot temper (vv. 24-25), the trap of standing surety for another's debt (vv. 26-27), and the theft of moving a boundary stone the fathers had set (v. 28) - each a quiet way of guarding both one's own soul and one's neighbor.
The chapter closes with a portrait drawn in a single question: Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men (v. 29). The whole weight falls on one word - diligent. The Hebrew pictures a person skilled and quick in his work, neither slothful nor careless but excellent at what he does. And the proverb makes a confident claim about where such a person ends up: he will stand before kings. Skill and faithful effort have a way of rising; the one who does ordinary work with excellence is, in time, called to greater things, while the one who does it poorly stays among the mean - the obscure and undistinguished. The verse is not crude ambition; it is a quiet honoring of work done well as a path that opens doors. Set at the end of a chapter that began by prizing a good name over riches, it rounds the teaching out beautifully: the diligent worker earns not merely advancement but a reputation, a name, that brings him before the great. What a person becomes through faithful, skillful work - not what he grasps after - is what finally lifts him.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Proverbs 22 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for shem tov (v. 1, the “good name” preferred above riches), for chanak (v. 6, the verb behind “train up,” elsewhere “dedicate”), and for the heading at verse 17 that opens the words of the wise as a distinct collection.
- Proverbs 22 ↔ Acts 4 · Philippians 2 · Romans 2 · Matthew 25Intertextual BibleTraces the chapter's threads through the rest of Scripture - the good name above riches (v. 1) beside the name above every name (Phil. 2:9; Acts 4:12), one Maker of rich and poor (v. 2) beside no respect of persons (Rom. 2:11), and the bountiful eye and care for the poor (vv. 9, 22-23) beside the King who counts mercy to the least done it unto me (Matt. 25:40).
- Proverbs 22 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Proverbs 22 - the phrasing of the “good name” saying (v. 1), the much-discussed grammar of “in the way he should go” (v. 6), the “bountiful eye” idiom for generosity (v. 9), and the structure of the new section that begins at verse 17, the words of the wise.
Where this echoes in Scripture
A Good Name Is Rather to Be Chosen
- Ecclesiastes 7:1A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.The same scale as verse 1 - a good name weighed against, and preferred above, costly things.
- Philippians 2:9-10given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.The good name of verse 1 lifted to its height - the one name above all.
- Job 34:19nor regardeth the rich more than the poor? for they all are the work of his hands.The truth of verse 2 - rich and poor alike the work of one Maker’s hands.
- 2 Corinthians 9:6-7He which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully... God loveth a cheerful giver.The blessing of the bountiful eye in verse 9 - generous giving that does not impoverish but enriches.
- Proverbs 19:17He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.The principle behind verse 9 - bread given to the poor counted as a loan the LORD repays.
Cast Out the Scorner · The Eyes of the LORD
- 2 Chronicles 16:9the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.The watching gaze of verse 12 - the eyes of the LORD active throughout the earth.
- Hebrews 4:13all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.The truth behind verse 12 - nothing hidden from the eyes that preserve knowledge.
- Psalm 34:13Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.The pure heart and gracious lips of verse 11 - speech kept clean before the watching LORD.
- Proverbs 13:24He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.The loving correction of verse 15 - discipline that drives folly from a child’s heart.
- Matthew 5:8Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.The pureness of heart commended in verse 11 - the clean heart that finds favour.
The Words of the Wise · That Thy Trust May Be in the LORD
- Psalm 37:5Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.The aim of verse 19 - a heart whose trust is settled in the LORD.
- Matthew 11:28-29Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... learn of me.The trust commended in verse 19 finding its rest in the One who is the wisdom of God.
- Proverbs 23:10-11Remove not the old landmark... For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause against thee.The same pairing as verses 22-23 and 28 - the landmark guarded and the LORD pleading the poor’s cause.
- 1 John 2:1we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.The LORD who pleads the poor’s cause in verse 23 - the advocate who pleads for His own.
- Romans 12:11Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.The diligence honored in verse 29 - faithful, fervent work as service to the Lord.