Proverbs10chapter 10

Proverbs 10:1-5

The proverbs of Solomon: The header marks a new collection, and the couplets fall at once into the book's working method, righteous set against wicked in a single line. A wise son and a foolish son open the chapter on the family theme the first nine chapters argued at length, now compressed to a single antithesis, and the next four verses run the same pattern over wealth: treasures of wickedness profit nothing, the diligent hand grows rich, the slack hand grows poor. Henry reads verse 3 as the frame over the rest, the Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish, providence standing behind the plain arithmetic of effort and reward.

Proverbs 10:6-10

A cluster on standing and reception: blessing rests on the just while violence hides behind the mouth of the wicked, and a good memory outlives a name that rots. Verse 8 sets the rule the rest of the chapter assumes, the wise in heart will receive commandments, but a prating fool shall fall, and verse 10 repeats the fool's fall from a different angle, the man who winks with the eye causing sorrow rather than the correction he refuses to hear. Gill takes the repeated line as the collection's own way of underlining a point rather than a copying error, the same warning landing twice because it needs to.

Proverbs 10:11-14

The tongue cluster opens here and runs through the chapter's end, the mouth of the righteous named a well of life against a violent mouth that hides its own wrong. Love covereth all sins answers hatred that stirreth up strifes in the same verse, the two clauses of 10:12 stating the chapter's whole case for what speech does to a household or a community. The lips of the understanding hold wisdom while a rod waits for the back that has none, and wise men lay up knowledge while the fool's mouth is near its own destruction, the cluster's opening set of contrasts.

Proverbs 10:15-19

The tongue cluster keeps running through verses framed as consequence: a rich man's wealth is a fortress and a poor man's poverty is his own ruin, labour tends to life while the fruit of wickedness tends to sin, and the way of life belongs to the one who keeps instruction. Verse 18 names the liar's real trade, hiding hatred with lying lips while spreading a slander, before the cluster reaches its center at verse 19, verified: in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin, but he that refraineth his lips is wise. Bridges reads the whole run as an argument for silence over speech wherever speech is not required, since every verse in the set prices the tongue's use against its restraint.

Proverbs 10:20-25

The cluster closes on the tongue's worth and the fool's danger: choice silver against a worthless heart, many fed by righteous lips while fools die for want of the wisdom no one gave them. The blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it answers the wealth-cluster of the chapter's opening from the other direction, gain that costs nothing further because it did not come from a slack or a grasping hand. The chapter turns from speech to outcome in its last two verses here, the wicked passing like a whirlwind while the righteous stands as an everlasting foundation, the fear that finally overtakes one and the desire that is finally granted to the other.

Proverbs 10:26-32

The chapter's closing set returns to comparison, the method that opened chapter 26's gallery of the fool: the sluggard sent on an errand is vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, irritation delivered instead of the help that was asked for. The fear of the Lord prolongeth days answers the book's motto once more, and the run of couplets that follows, the righteous never removed, the wicked not inhabiting the earth, the just mouth bringing forth wisdom against the froward tongue cut out, gathers the chapter's whole argument into one closing rhythm. Delitzsch notes the final line, the lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, as the positive form of everything the chapter has said in the negative about the wicked mouth.