Proverbs 11 · Passage · Generosity
The Generous Will Prosper
The proverb stands in Solomon's collection, and its Hebrew turns on words for scattering, blessing and watering.
In a famine a widow baked her last flour for a stranger, and her jar did not run empty.
A generous soul will prosper, and he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.
- The passage
- Proverbs 11:24, Proverbs 11:25, Proverbs 11:26, 1 Kings 17:12 to 16
- Books
- Proverbs, 1 Kings
- Hold in memory
- Proverbs 11:25
Summary
The proverb weighs the open hand against the closed one. The man who scatters his goods ends with more, and the man who holds back ends in want. The people curse the seller who keeps his grain from them in a hungry year, and they bless the one who sells it.
- The Hebrew behind a generous soul in verse 25 means a person who is a blessing.
- The scattering verb of verse 24 returns in Psalm 112:9.
- A proverb states a general truth of life under God's rule.
Three Lines on Giving and Withholding
The first two lines set the giver against the withholder, and the third puts the same choice in a time of famine.
Proverbs 11:24 to 26 states in three short lines what happens to a person who gives and to a person who holds back. It belongs to the value of generosity because it names the open hand as the way of blessing. A reader who is afraid to give will ask whether giving makes him poor, and these lines answer that question.
This study reads the three lines word by word from the Hebrew. It sets the widow of Zarephath beside them as the story that shows them, and it weighs whether a proverb is a promise. Albert Barnes, John Gill, Adam Clarke and Cyprian of Carthage are the teachers it hears.
The Hebrew line opens yesh mefazzer, there is one who scatters. The verb pazar means to scatter, whether in enmity or in bounty, and here it is the bounty of a man who gives without counting.
The Six Half-Lines and Their Hebrew Words
Each verse has two halves, and a Hebrew word in each half carries its turn.
Verses 24 and 26 set a giver against a withholder, and verse 25 gives both its halves to the giver.
| Half-line | The words in the Berean text | The Hebrew word and its gloss |
|---|---|---|
| 24, the giver | One gives freely, yet gains even more; | mefazzer, one who scatters |
| 24, the withholder | another withholds what is right, only to become poor. | chosekh, one who withholds |
| 25, the giver blessed | A generous soul will prosper, | nefesh berakah, a person of blessing |
| 25, the giver refreshed | and he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. | marveh, one who gives water |
| 26, the withholder cursed | The people will curse the hoarder of grain, | mone'a bar, one who withholds grain |
| 26, the seller blessed | but blessing will crown the one who sells it. | mashbir, one who sells grain |
The One Who Scatters
The first line turns on two Hebrew verbs, to scatter and to hold back.
The withholder of the second half holds back mi-yosher, from what is upright. Albert Barnes gives the sense of the half-line as one who "Is sparing and niggardly where he ought to give". He calls the verse a paradox, "to which the two following verses supply the answer".
He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn will be lifted high in honor.The psalm praises the righteous man for his gifts to the poor.
Pazar stands ten times in the Hebrew Bible by the store's count. The psalm's line reaches the New Testament in Paul's letter to Corinth, and The Grace of Giving teaches that letter in full.
The Person of Blessing
The second line pictures the giver's reward as fatness and water.
The Hebrew of the first half is nefesh berakah tedushan, and its verb tedushan is glossed he will be made fat, the Hebrew picture of plenty. The second half reads u-marveh gam hu yoreh, and the one who gives water, he too will be given water.
“Liberal soul - literally, ‘the soul that blesses,’ i. e., gives freely and fully. The similitudes are both of them essentially Eastern. Fatness, the sleek, well filled look of health, becomes the figure of prosperity, as leanness of misfortune Pro 13:4; Pro 28:25; Psa 22:29; Isa 10:16. Kindly acts come as the refreshing dew and soft rain from heaven upon a thirsty land.”
Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869) · on Proverbs 11:25Evangelical
Berakah names a gift as well as a blessing. When Abigail brought food to David's men, she called it "this gift", and the Hebrew word is berakah.
Now let this gift your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow you.Abigail asks David to give her present to the young men who follow him.
The Hoarder of Grain in a Famine
Gill and the Targum read the hoarder as a merchant in a famine.
John Gill read the line of one who "hoards it up for a better price, in hopes of a better market", and he noted that the Targum adds the words "in famine".
The proverb blesses the man who sells his grain at a fair price, so the line asks for an open hand in trade as well as in gifts.
Kindness to the poor is a loan to the LORD, and He will repay the lender.Proverbs gives the LORD Himself as the one who answers for the giver.
A generous man will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.The Hebrew behind the generous man is tov ayin, good of eye.
Whoever gives to the poor will not be in need, but he who hides his eyes will receive many curses.The proverb names looking away from the poor as the withholder's fault.
The Widow of Zarephath
The account in 1 Kings 17 shows the proverb in one household.
The LORD sent Elijah to Zarephath of Sidon in the drought and told him that a widow there would feed him. At the gate he asked her for water and then for a piece of bread.
But she replied, “As surely as the LORD your God lives, I have no bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. Look, I am gathering a couple of sticks to take home and prepare a meal for myself and my son, so that we may eat it and die.”The widow tells the prophet that she has only enough for one last meal for herself and her son.
“Do not be afraid,” Elijah said to her. “Go and do as you have said. But first make me a small cake of bread from what you have, and bring it out to me. Afterward, make some for yourself and your son, for this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be exhausted and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain upon the face of the earth.’”The prophet's request comes with a promise that her food will last.
So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and there was food every day for Elijah and the woman and her household. The jar of flour was not exhausted and the jug of oil did not run dry, according to the word that the LORD had spoken through Elijah.The account records that the flour and the oil lasted, as the LORD had said.
Cyprian of Carthage told her story in On Works and Alms (chapter 17, translated by R. E. Wallis, 1886). He wrote that "Neither is it a portion out of abundance, but the whole out of a little, that is given, and another is fed before her hungry children".
Jesus named the same widow in the synagogue at Nazareth.
But I tell you truthfully that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and great famine swept over all the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to the widow of Zarephath in Sidon.Jesus uses her story to show that God sent His prophet to a woman outside Israel.
1 Kings 17:15 to 16, Luke 4:25 to 26
The Good Eye and the Hand
Adam Clarke read the good eye of Proverbs 22:9 as a heart that gives even when the hand has little.
1762 to 1832 · Adam Clarke
Commentary on the Bible
The bountiful eye is the bountiful heart
The quotation1 quotation
“A bountiful eye - One that disposes him to help all that he sees to be in want; the bountiful eye means the bountiful heart; for the heart looks through the eye. The merciful heart, even when the hand has little or nothing to give, shall be blessed of the Lord.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible · on Proverbs 22:9Evangelical
A Proverb or a Promise
Commentators read the increase of verses 24 and 25 as God's blessing on the giver's goods or as the good that giving does the giver.
The book itself warns against reading a man's wealth by its look.
One pretends to be rich, but has nothing; another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth.The verse sets a man who pretends to be rich beside a man who pretends to be poor.
God increases the giver's goodsJohn Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, on Proverbs 11:24
Gill read the scatterer as one who gives "among many poor objects, plentifully and liberally". He held that "his substance is so far from being lessened by such a conduct, that, by the blessing of God, it is increased more and more".
The objection comes from Proverbs 13:7 and from the widow of Mark 12, who gave all she had and is not said to have grown rich.
The giver gains more good than the one who receivesAdam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, on Proverbs 11:25
“The liberal soul shall be made fat - He who gives to the distressed, in the true spirit of charity, shall get a hundred fold from God’s mercy. How wonderful is the Lord! He gives the property, gives the heart to use it aright, and recompenses the man for the deed though all the fruit was found from himself! He that watereth - A man who distributes in the right spirit gets more good himself than the poor man does who receives the bounty. Thus it is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible · on Proverbs 11:25Evangelical
The objection is that the first half of verse 24 speaks of gaining more, which reads as goods and not only as inward good.
The Open Hand
The proverb measures a life by what it lets go, and the widow showed it in a famine.
The three lines judge a person by the hand. The open hand that scatters is fed, watered and blessed, and the hand closed on grain in a hungry year is cursed. The widow of Zarephath had a handful of flour to give, and she is the widow whom Jesus named.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Hebrew (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, and the Tyndale House tagged Hebrew text.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on Proverbs 11:24 and 11:25.
- John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748 to 1763), on Proverbs 11:24 and 11:26.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Proverbs 11:25 and 22:9.
- Cyprian of Carthage, On Works and Alms, chapter 17, translated by R. E. Wallis, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 5 (1886)
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