Proverbs14chapter 14

Proverbs 14:1-2

The chapter opens where the acrostic of chapter 31 will end, on a woman building a house, and the same hands that build can pull it down with folly. Walking uprightly and fearing the Lord stand as the same act seen from two sides, and Henry ties the pair together as the working proof of the fear of the Lord named at 1:7. The foolish woman's ruin is domestic and immediate, a house undone by its own occupant rather than by an enemy outside it.

Proverbs 14:3-5

A proud mouth is its own rod, striking the fool who carries it, while the wise are kept safe by the very lips that other men fear. The empty stall between the two proverbs of pride and profit belongs together by an older logic: a clean crib means no working ox and no increase, so the mess an ox makes is the price of the harvest it brings. The chapter closes the group on a faithful witness against a false one, the same integrity that keeps the wise now guarding the courtroom.

Proverbs 14:6-9

A scorner seeks wisdom the way a thief seeks daylight, wanting the reputation without the discipline, and finds nothing because the search itself is dishonest, while knowledge comes easily to the man who actually wants to understand. Departing from a foolish man's company is itself an act of wisdom, since his lips carry no knowledge worth the risk of staying near them. The cluster lands on the chapter's hardest line: fools make a mock at sin, treating guilt itself as a joke, while among the righteous favour is the settled state sin can never counterfeit.

Proverbs 14:10

Every heart carries a bitterness and a joy that belong to it alone, and no stranger, however close, can fully enter either one. Gill reads the verse against easy comfort offered from outside, since grief and gladness both have an interior the nearest friend can only stand beside. The proverb does not counsel isolation; it names a limit built into being human.

Proverbs 14:11

The wicked man builds a house, solid and permanent by every outward sign, and it is overthrown; the upright man pitches only a tent, temporary by its own name, and it flourishes. Henry draws the contrast on purpose: the proverb measures endurance by the builder's standing with God rather than by the building's material. A tabernacle that lasts outlives a house that does not.

Proverbs 14:12-13

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death: the book repeats this sentence word for word at 16:25, a doubling that states the danger twice because self-deceived confidence is the hardest error to catch from inside. The verse warns against trusting a feeling of rightness in place of the fear of the Lord that opened the book. Verse 13 extends the same warning to pleasure: even in laughter the heart can be sorrowful, and mirth can end in heaviness the laughing face never showed.

Proverbs 14:14

The backslider gets exactly what he chose, filled with his own ways rather than punished by some foreign judgment, and the sentence lets his own path be his sentence. Against him stands the good man, satisfied from himself, at rest in a character built by obedience rather than dependent on what others give him. Wesley reads both halves as the same law working in opposite directions, a man reaping the field he actually planted.

Proverbs 14:15-16

The simple believes every word offered him, an open door with no guard at it, while the prudent man looks well to his own going and tests the ground before he steps. The same contrast runs into fear: the wise man fears and departs from evil, cautious of what could ruin him, and the fool rages ahead in a confidence that has never once been earned. Clarke notes that the fool's confidence is the more dangerous of the two failures, since it feels like courage while it functions like blindness.

Proverbs 14:17-18

A man soon angry acts before he thinks and calls it strength, and a man of wicked devices earns hatred by the same haste turned deliberate. Folly is the simple man's inheritance, passed down by neglect rather than chosen outright, while knowledge is the crown the prudent actually work to wear. Gill sets the two pairs side by side as the book's ordinary lesson: what a man does not resist he inherits, and what he does not pursue he never wears.

Proverbs 14:19-21

The evil bow before the good: The evil bow before the good and the wicked wait at the gates of the righteous, a reversal the proverb states plainly though the world often runs the other way in the meantime. The chapter's cluster on poverty opens here without softening it: the poor is hated even of his own neighbour, while the rich collects friends by the simple gravity of having something to give. Despising a neighbour is named sin outright, and mercy toward the poor is named happiness outright, so the two verses that follow are not observation only but instruction.

Proverbs 14:22-25

Those who devise evil err by the plainest definition, while mercy and truth belong to those who devise good, the same word, devise, used of a plan that can run toward ruin or toward kindness. Labour turns to profit and idle talk turns to poverty, and riches sit as the wise man's crown while folly is all the fool ever wears. The witness pair closes the group by echoing verse 5: a true witness delivers souls, and a deceitful witness speaks nothing but lies, the same integrity tested now in a courtroom rather than a conversation.

Proverbs 14:26-27

The fear of the Lord returns as the book's own motto, now given its reward: strong confidence and a place of refuge that reaches to the children of the man who fears him. It is a fountain of life, active rather than passive, drawing a man away from the snares of death before he ever meets them. Bridges reads the two verses as one promise stated twice, first as shelter and then as escape.

Proverbs 14:28-30

A king's honour is counted in people rather than territory, so an empty land is a prince's ruin even where his throne still stands. Patience is named great understanding and haste is named folly's own promotion, the same contrast the chapter has already drawn between the wise and the confident fool. A sound heart gives life to the whole body, while envy works the opposite way, rotting the bones of the very man it burns in.

Proverbs 14:31

The poor-and-oppressor thread that opened at verse 20 reaches its point here: to oppress the poor is to reproach the God who made him, since the insult lands past the poor man onto his Maker. Mercy toward the poor is named honour toward the same Maker, so the two halves of the verse are one theology stated as two actions. Henry reads the verse as the book's clearest statement that how a man treats the poor is how he actually regards God.

Proverbs 14:32-33

The wicked man is driven away by his own wickedness rather than by an outside hand, while the righteous keeps hope even at death, the one place the wicked man's confidence cannot follow him. Wisdom rests quietly in the heart of a man who understands it, content to be possessed rather than displayed. Among fools it works the other way, made known because a fool cannot help but show what little he has.

Proverbs 14:34-35

Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people closes the chapter on its public turn, moving the fear of the Lord from one man's house to a whole nation's standing. Henry applies it directly to any government resting on righteousness rather than on power alone, a verse the histories of Israel and Judah illustrate both ways. The closing proverb narrows the same principle to one court: a king favours the wise servant and turns his wrath on the one who brings him shame.