A Good Name Is Better Than Great Riches
1 A good name is more desirable than great riches, and loving favor is better than silver and gold. 2 The rich and the poor have this in common: Yahweh is the maker of them all. 3 A prudent man sees danger and hides himself; but the simple pass on, and suffer for it. 4 The result of humility and the fear of Yahweh is wealth, honor, and life. 5 Thorns and snares are in the path of the wicked; whoever guards his soul stays far from them. 6 Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. 7 The rich rule over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender. 8 He who sows wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed. 9 He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor. 10 Drive out the mocker, and strife will go out; yes, quarrels and insults will stop. 11 He who loves purity of heart and speaks gracefully is the king’s friend. 12 Yahweh’s eyes watch over knowledge, but he frustrates the words of the unfaithful. 13 The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside! I will be killed in the streets!” 14 The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit. He who is under Yahweh’s wrath will fall into it. 15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline drives it far from him. 16 Whoever oppresses the poor for his own increase and whoever gives to the rich, both come to poverty.
The Solomon collection closes with a saying about reputation, one about training a child, and one about what rich and poor have in common.
A good name is more desirable than great riches. Reputation is treated here as a possession that can be gained and lost. It is priced above money, in a collection that has never pretended money does not matter. The second half adds something less expected: loving favor is better than silver and gold. Being regarded warmly, not merely respected.
The next verse is the collection's flattest statement about human equality, and it grounds it in one fact: The rich and the poor have this in common: Yahweh is the maker of them all. No comment is added. The economic difference is not denied, minimized or explained. It is simply set beside a common origin, and the reader is left to work out what follows.
The verse everyone knows is here: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Read as this book reads its own sayings, it is a proverb. It states the general power of early formation, rather than issuing a guarantee to every parent. The collection has already recorded fathers grieved by foolish sons Proverbs 17:21, so it knows the exception exists. What it asserts is that upbringing shapes a life more deeply and durably than anything applied later.
Two verses on money are unusually direct about power. The rich rule over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender. Neither sentence contains a moral. They describe a structure, and the practical counsel about debt and guaranteeing loans throughout the book follows from it. Then the balancing verse: He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.
The last verse of the collection is a warning aimed at two opposite behaviors with one outcome: Whoever oppresses the poor for his own increase and whoever gives to the rich, both come to poverty. Squeezing those below you and flattering those above you are named together. They look like different strategies. The collection says they end in the same place.
settled What this mark means