Proverbs 23
Proverbs 23 reads like a father leaning close to his son and talking without pause - a long stretch of counsel that moves from the dinner table of a powerful man, to the raising of a child, to the envy that gnaws at a young person watching the wicked prosper, and finally to the seduction of strong drink. Underneath the shifting subjects runs one steady current: the heart. The chapter is preoccupied with the inner person, the place where a life is really decided. It opens at a ruler's table where the food looks generous but the host's heart is elsewhere, and it states the principle plainly: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he (v. 7). What a person is on the inside is what they truly are.3
From there the father urges his son to take wisdom in deep - Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge (v. 12) - and to keep his heart clear of a poison that ruins the young: envy of those who seem to get away with evil. Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long (v. 17). Against the short-lived shine of the wicked he sets a hope that cannot be stolen: surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off (v. 18). At the heart of the chapter stands its single most quoted line, a command about what is worth any cost: Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding (v. 23).
Then the counsel reaches its most personal point. After all the warnings, the father makes the deepest request a teacher can make - not for obedience only, not for information, but for the son's very self: My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways (v. 26). The chapter closes with one of the most unforgettable passages in the book: a sustained, almost cinematic warning against the deceit of drink, the wine that is beautiful in the cup and at the last… biteth like a serpent (vv. 29-35). It is a picture of every false freedom - the thing that promises release and delivers bondage - set against the truth that is worth buying and never selling.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Proverbs 23:1-11As He Thinketh in His Heart, So Is He
1When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: 2And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. 3Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat. 4Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. 5Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven. 6Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats: 7For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee. 8The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words. 9Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words. 10Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: 11For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.
The chapter opens at a table that looks like a privilege and is really a test: When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite (vv. 1-2). To dine with a powerful man was a mark of favour, and the spread before the guest would be lavish. The counsel is not against eating but against being ruled by the eye and the stomach - against the kind of person whose appetite makes him careless and grasping in a setting where he ought to be alert. The image of a knife to thy throat is deliberately startling: hold yourself in check as if your life depended on it, because in a sense it does. Then the father names the danger directly: Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat (v. 3). The rich food is deceitful - it is not the simple kindness it appears to be. Behind a host's generosity there may be calculation, a debt being quietly created, a hook hidden in the meal. Wisdom watches what is really being offered, and is not bought by a full plate.3
The warning about the table widens into a warning about wealth itself: Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? (vv. 4-5). To labour to be rich is to make wealth the driving aim of a life, to wear oneself out chasing it; and to lean on thine own wisdom here is to trust one's own cleverness to secure it. The father calls this setting the eyes upon that which is not - a striking phrase. Riches are not as solid as they look; in a sense they are not, because they have no permanence to grip. Then comes the unforgettable image: for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven (v. 5). Money does not merely slip away slowly; it sprouts wings and is gone, soaring off like an eagle, swift and beyond recall. Riches are real, and Proverbs nowhere calls them evil. But to fix the eyes on them, to build a life on them, to trust them - that is to anchor everything to a thing that can vanish overnight. The eye that is meant to seek wisdom is here squandered on what cannot stay.
The father returns to the table, now with a sharper warning: Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats (v. 6). The evil eye in Scripture is the stingy, grudging, ungenerous spirit - the host who sets out a feast but resents every bite his guest takes. And then comes the verse that lays bare the whole problem and states the principle the chapter turns on: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee (v. 7). Here is the hinge. With his mouth the man plays the gracious host - Eat and drink - but his heart is not with thee. What he says and what he is are two different things, and the second is the true one. The line as he thinketh in his heart, so is he reaches far beyond this one stingy host. It is one of the most quoted sentences in the book because it names a law that runs through every life: a person is, finally, what they are on the inside. Not the performance, not the words at the table, but the heart - that is the real self. The end of such a meal is bitter: The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words (v. 8). The flattery spent to win such a host is wasted breath.
Two short sayings close the section. The first guards wisdom itself: Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words (v. 9). Wise words are precious and should not be wasted on someone determined to scorn them; the wise know when to speak and when silence is the better gift. The second turns to the most vulnerable people in that world: Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: for their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee (vv. 10-11). Property lines were marked by boundary stones, and to quietly shift one was to steal land - a crime especially tempting when the owner was an orphan with no one to defend the claim. The father forbids it absolutely, and gives a reason that should make any schemer pause: their redeemer is mighty. The redeemer - in Hebrew the near kinsman whose duty was to take up the cause of a helpless relative - will not be some weak protector. For the fatherless, the LORD Himself stands as the mighty kinsman who shall plead their cause. To prey on the defenseless is to pick a fight with their God. The heart that the chapter keeps watching is revealed here too: how a person treats those who cannot fight back shows what they truly are.
Proverbs 23:12-18Be Thou in the Fear of the LORD All the Day Long
12Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge. 13Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. 14Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. 15My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. 16Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things. 17Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long. 18For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.
The father turns from warnings to a direct plea for his son's attention: Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge (v. 12). The verb apply is active and deliberate - it is not enough to let wisdom drift past; the heart must be bent toward it, the ears turned to it on purpose. Learning is not a passive download but a posture of the whole inner self leaning in. Then comes a pair of verses on the discipline of a child that have been pondered and debated for centuries: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell (vv. 13-14). The point the proverb is pressing is not cruelty but the opposite - that to leave a child entirely uncorrected is itself a kind of harm. The greater danger to a young soul, the father says, is not loving correction but the absence of any guidance at all. Discipline rightly given does not destroy a child; it is meant to steer them away from the path that ruins a life. The word rendered hell here is the Hebrew sheol, the realm of the dead - so the saying sets the stakes of formation high: how a child is shaped now bears on far more than the present moment. The heart of the verses is the duty not to abandon the young to themselves but to care enough to guide them.
Now the father's voice grows tender, and we hear what is really driving all this counsel: love. My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things (vv. 15-16). The repetition - my heart… even mine… my reins - lets the feeling spill over. The reins are the kidneys, which the Hebrews regarded as a deep seat of emotion; to say my reins shall rejoice is to say the gladness reaches the very core of him. And notice the order of cause and effect: the father's joy does not depend on his son's success or wealth or status, but on whether his son's heart be wise and his lips speak right things. Here is a father whose deepest happiness is bound up not in what his child achieves but in who his child becomes. It quietly reveals why the whole chapter exists. These are not the cold rules of a taskmaster; they are the pleadings of a parent who will be made glad to the depths when his child chooses wisdom. The instruction is an act of love, and the reward the father longs for is simply a wise and honest child.
The father names a poison that especially attacks the young and the good: envy of those who seem to prosper by doing wrong. Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long (v. 17). It is an old and bitter temptation - to watch people cut corners, cheat, and live without conscience, and to see them apparently winning, and to feel the heart curdle with resentment and longing to join them. The father's answer is not to argue about fairness but to redirect the heart entirely: instead of envying sinners, be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long. Let reverent awe of God, not comparison with the wicked, fill the heart through the whole of every day. And he anchors that redirection in a promise about how things actually end: For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off (v. 18). The prosperity of the wicked has an end - it does not run on forever, however it looks now. But the one who fears the LORD has an expectation, a future hope, that shall not be cut off. The envious heart fixes on the short-term shine of evil; the wise heart lifts its eyes to the long view, where the accounts are finally settled and the patient hope of the faithful is not disappointed.
Proverbs 23:19-28Buy the Truth, and Sell It Not · Give Me Thine Heart
19Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. 20Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: 21For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. 22Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old. 23Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding. 24The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. 25Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice. 26My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways. 27For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit. 28She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.
The father gathers his counsel into a single steering image: Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way (v. 19). The verb guide pictures the heart as something that can be steered, like a traveler choosing a road or a hand on a rudder. The heart does not stay on the right path by accident; it must be guided there and kept there. And the first thing he names to guide it away from is the company of the self-indulgent: Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags (vv. 20-21). The danger he warns of is partly the company itself - be not among them - because we drift toward those we surround ourselves with. And the outcome he foresees is not a thunderbolt of judgment but a slow slide: the life given over to appetite drifts toward poverty, and the laziness that follows excess clothes a person with rags. Appetite, once it rules, is a costly master; it spends a person's resources, hours, and dignity by degrees. Then, between these warnings, he sets the bedrock of it all: Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old (v. 22). The wisdom being handed down is not a stranger's; it comes through the people who gave the son life, and is not to be discarded when they grow old and easy to dismiss.
At the very center of the chapter stands its single most quoted line: Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding (v. 23). The proverb uses the language of the marketplace to say something about what is worth the price of a life. Buy the truth - pay whatever it costs to come into possession of it: the effort, the humility, the surrender of comfortable illusions, whatever the price. Truth is not cheap, and it is not free; it asks something of everyone who would have it. But the second half is even more pointed: and sell it not. Once you have it, there is no price at which you should ever trade it away. People sell the truth all the time - for popularity, for advantage, for the ease of going along, for a profit, for a comfortable lie. The father forbids it absolutely. Truth, with its companions wisdom, and instruction, and understanding, is the one possession a person should be willing to buy at any cost and refuse to sell at any price. It is the opposite of the riches in verse 5 that sprout wings and fly away - this is a treasure that, once truly bought and held fast, can become the most permanent thing a person owns. The whole appeal of the chapter is gathered here: get the truth, and never, ever let it go.
After the call to buy the truth comes a glimpse of the joy it brings, and then the deepest request in the chapter. The joy first: The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice… Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice (vv. 24-25). A wise and righteous child is a parent's deepest gladness - the mother who bore him and the father who taught him both rejoice, not in his wealth or fame, but in his goodness. And out of that love comes the request the whole chapter has been moving toward: My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways (v. 26). Notice what is asked for. Not the son's obedience only, not his outward conformity, not merely his attention - but his heart, the command center of the whole self that the chapter has watched from the beginning. This is the one thing wisdom is finally after. All the warnings about the table, the wealth, the wine, the strange woman - they all come down to this: give me thine heart. And it is paired with imitation: let thine eyes observe my ways. The heart is given, and then the life is formed by watching how wisdom actually walks. This is how a person is shaped - not by rules alone but by handing over the heart and then keeping the eyes on a way worth following. The father closes with one last warning of where a stolen, ungoverned heart ends up: the immoral woman who is a deep ditch and a narrow pit, who lieth in wait as for a prey (vv. 27-28) - a trap that is easy to fall into and desperately hard to climb out of. The contrast is stark: give your heart to wisdom, or have it captured by what waits to destroy it.
Proverbs 23:29-35Look Not Thou Upon the Wine When It Is Red
29Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? 30They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. 31Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. 32At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. 33Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. 34Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. 35They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
The chapter ends with its most vivid and sustained passage - a portrait of drunkenness so sharply drawn it almost plays like a scene. It opens with a riddle, a string of questions that hang in the air before the answer lands: Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? (v. 29). Read them slowly and a single ruined figure comes into focus - a person full of woe and sorrow, forever in contentions and pointless babbling, marked with wounds without cause from fights and falls he cannot even remember, his eyes red and bleary. Then the answer arrives, and it is no surprise: They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine (v. 30). All that misery has one source. The telling word is tarry - and the seeking. This is not the person who takes a cup; it is the one who tarries long, who stays and stays, who actively goes to seek the next drink. The portrait is of appetite that has become a pursuit, a thirst that organizes a life around itself - and the questions of verse 29 are simply the bill that comes due.
Now the father gives the warning itself, and it turns on the deceit of how the thing looks: Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright (v. 31). He lingers, almost lovingly, on the beauty of it - the deep red, the way it catches the light and glows in the cup, the smooth swirl as it moveth itself aright. This is the seduction: it is genuinely attractive in the moment, pleasing to the eye, promising warmth and ease and release. And precisely there is the trap, for the warning is look not - do not even let the gaze linger and be drawn in by the surface. Because the surface lies about the end: At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder (v. 32). The beautiful red liquid that swirls so invitingly turns, at the last, into a snake. What entered the mouth like a friend leaves like a viper. Here is the chapter's whole theme of deceit brought to its sharpest point - the table whose dainties were deceitful meat (v. 3), the riches that looked solid and flew away (v. 5), all gathered into this one image of a pleasure that is gorgeous at the first sip and venomous at the last. The eye sees the colour in the cup; it does not see the serpent coiled at the bottom of it.
The passage ends by climbing inside the experience itself, showing what the bondage feels like from within. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things (v. 33) - the mind unmoored, perception distorted, the heart spilling out what sober judgment would have held back. Then a brilliant image of total disorientation: Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast (v. 34) - the reeling, pitching helplessness of a man trying to sleep on the heaving deck or atop the swaying mast of a ship, no solid ground anywhere, the whole world tilting. And finally the most chilling line of all, the voice of the captive himself: They have stricken me… and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again (v. 35). He has been knocked about and did not even feel it - and his very first thought on waking, with the wreckage of the last binge all around him, is to find more. This is the deepest horror of the portrait: not the wounds, but the enslaved will that, even battered and numb, turns straight back toward the thing destroying it. I will seek it yet again. Here is the counterfeit liberty exposed for what it is - it promised freedom and delivered a chain so strong the prisoner reaches for it himself. It is the exact opposite of the truth of verse 23, which sets a person free; this binds, and teaches the bound to love their binding.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Proverbs 23 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for emet (v. 23, the “truth” the reader is told to buy and never sell), for lev (the “heart” that recurs in vv. 7, 12, 15, 17, 19, 26), and for the difficult clause in verse 7, as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.
- Proverbs 23 ↔ Deuteronomy 6 · Matthew 22 · John 8 & 14Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Proverbs 23 to the rest of Scripture - give me thine heart (v. 26) read beside the command to love God with all thine heart (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37), and buy the truth, and sell it not (v. 23) read alongside the One who said I am… the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 14:6; 8:32).
- Proverbs 23 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Proverbs 23 - the warning about the ruler's table and the “deceitful meat” of verses 1-8, the much-discussed clause in verse 7, the rod-and-correction sayings of verses 13-14, and the extended portrait of drunkenness in verses 29-35.
Where this echoes in Scripture
As He Thinketh in His Heart, So Is He
- Matthew 15:8This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.The split named in verse 7 - lips saying one thing while the heart is elsewhere.
- Luke 12:15Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.The warning of verses 4-5 - against laboring to be rich and trusting what cannot last.
- 1 Timothy 6:9they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare... which drown men in destruction and perdition.The danger of verse 4 - making wealth the aim of a life.
- Proverbs 22:28Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.The same command as verse 10 - the boundary stone that must not be moved.
- Psalm 68:5A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.The mighty redeemer of verse 11 - God Himself as defender of the defenseless.
Be Thou in the Fear of the LORD All the Day Long
- Psalm 73:2-3, 17I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked... Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.The very temptation and cure of verses 17-18 - envy of the wicked answered by the long view of their end.
- Proverbs 24:14so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off.The same promise as verse 18 - an expectation, a future hope, that holds.
- Hebrews 12:11no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous... nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.The purpose of the correction in verses 13-14 - discipline aimed at a child’s good.
- 1 Peter 1:4To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.The expectation that shall not be cut off (v. 18) - a hope kept secure.
- Proverbs 3:11-12My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD... for whom the LORD loveth he correcteth.The loving correction behind verses 13-14 - discipline as an expression of care.
Buy the Truth, and Sell It Not · Give Me Thine Heart
- John 14:6I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.The truth of verse 23 named in person - not only true words, but the truth itself.
- Matthew 22:37Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.The request of verse 26 - the whole heart, asked for as the first and great commandment.
- Proverbs 4:23Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.The reason the heart is what is asked for (v. 26) - everything in a life flows from it.
- Matthew 13:45-46a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price... sold all that he had, and bought it.The trade of verse 23 - the treasure worth buying at any cost.
- John 8:32And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.The worth of the truth bought in verse 23 - the truth that liberates rather than binds.
Look Not Thou Upon the Wine When It Is Red
- Ephesians 5:18And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.The two fillings set side by side - the cup of verses 31-32 against the Spirit who truly satisfies.
- John 8:34-36Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin... If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.The bondage of verse 35 answered - the freedom the wine counterfeits and the Son truly gives.
- Proverbs 20:1Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.The same deceit as verses 31-32 - the drink that mocks and misleads.
- Isaiah 5:11Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink.The pursuit of verse 35 - the life that seeks the drink yet again.
- John 7:37If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.The true answer to the thirst behind verses 29-35 - the One whose drink satisfies and frees.