Proverbs22chapter 22

Proverbs 22:1-2

A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches opens the chapter valuing reputation earned by character over inherited or acquired wealth, and loving favour rather than silver and gold repeats the point from the other direction. The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all levels the two classes at their root, Henry reading it as a check on both envy from below and contempt from above, the distinction between rich and poor providence's arrangement rather than a difference in what each is worth before God.

Proverbs 22:3-5

A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself, while the simple walk straight into the same danger and pay for it, a proverb repeated word for word at 27:12. By humility and the fear of the Lord names the true source of riches, honour and life that the chapter opened by preferring to wealth for its own sake, humility and the fear of the Lord answering the good name of verse 1 with the root that produces it. Thorns and snares in the way of the froward closes the trio with the same foresight theme, the man who keeps his soul staying clear of dangers a careless man walks straight through.

Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it is read two ways among the bench, as a promise, God's own guarantee attached to faithful upbringing, so Gill and much of the older devotional reading, and as a proverb stating the ordinary tendency of things rather than a covenant guarantee, since the book's own genre is observed wisdom, the reading Bridges leans toward when he notes the exceptions Scripture itself records, such as godly Hezekiah's son Manasseh. Both readings agree on the verse's plain force, the way a child is directed young shaping the way he is inclined to go, whichever weight the outcome is finally given.

Proverbs 22:7-9

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender, states a plain economic fact rather than a complaint, debt itself a form of servitude regardless of how willingly it was entered. He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity extends the chapter's harvest imagery to wrongdoing generally, the rod of his anger, the power a wicked man wields against others, finally failing him. He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed closes the group with the opposite pattern, generosity toward the poor answered in kind rather than the exploitation verse 7 described.

Proverbs 22:10-12

Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out treats strife as a problem with an identifiable cause, removable once the source is removed rather than something a household simply has to endure. He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend, credits inward character with outward favour, a courtier's advancement traced to what he is rather than only what he says. The eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge closes the cluster with the same divine oversight the chapter has already named at verse 2, watching over the truthful and undoing the transgressor's own words.

Proverbs 22:13-14

The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets, gives the sluggard's excuse-making its most absurd form yet, danger invented rather than found to justify staying home. The mouth of strange women is a deep pit turns from invented danger to a real one, the same warning the first nine chapters gave at length now compressed into one line, and he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein reads the trap as consequence rather than accident, a man's own standing before God bound up with what he lets himself fall into.

Proverbs 22:15-16

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child follows the training proverb of verse 6 with the reason training is needed at all, folly assumed as the child's natural starting point rather than an occasional lapse, and the rod of correction is named as what drives it out. He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want closes the pair with an economic reversal, two different routes, exploiting the poor and flattering the wealthy, both ending in the same loss.

Proverbs 22:17-21

Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise marks the book's third named header, opening a new section that runs to 24:22 and asking the same attentive hearing the earlier headers asked at 1:1 and 10:1. A portion of this section's proverbs run in close order and content with an Egyptian wisdom text, the Instruction of Amenemope, a real finding of later scholarship, and the traditional position, held by most of the older bench who wrote before the Egyptian text's modern discovery, is that Solomon's proverbs stand as inspired wisdom in their own right whatever their relation to other ancient collections, the direction of borrowing, or whether both draw on a common older tradition, a question scholars hold differently. That thy trust may be in the Lord states the section's own purpose plainly, the certainty of the words of truth to be answered rightly to those who ask, whatever the words' literary background.

Proverbs 22:22-23

Rob not the poor, because he is poor, neither oppress the afflicted in the gate, names the two easiest targets for exploitation, someone with no resources to fight back and someone with no standing in the place where legal decisions were made. For the Lord will plead their cause answers both warnings with a promise rather than only a prohibition, God named as the poor man's own advocate in court, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them completes the reversal, the exploiter facing the very treatment he dealt out.

Proverbs 22:24-27

Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go warns against chosen company rather than accidental encounter, the danger named in the next verse as contagion, learning his ways and getting a snare to thy soul from association alone. Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts, repeats the book's recurring warning against pledging surety, and if thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee names the plainest possible consequence, the debtor's own bed, his last remaining possession, seized for a debt he never personally incurred.

Proverbs 22:28-29

Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set, protects inherited property boundaries under the same law given at Deuteronomy 19:14 and 27:17, a quiet theft accomplished by moving a stone rather than by force. Seest thou a man diligent in his business closes the chapter with the promise attached to skilled, faithful work, standing before kings rather than before mean men, and the bench reads the two verses together as the chapter's last contrast, the man who respects what belongs to others against the man whose own diligence earns him a place others cannot buy.