Proverbs 10:9

These verses stand near the start of the Proverbs of Solomon (Proverbs 10:1–22:16), where the long speeches of the opening chapters give way to short sayings of two lines each. In most of them the second line is set against the first, so that the wise and the foolish, or the righteous and the wicked, are seen together with the end each one comes to. Sayings like these were learned by heart and handed down from the old to the young, in families and among neighbours.

Wisdom in Israel was a practical skill for living well before God, and it has one starting point. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), and the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). In a world where almost everything was passed on by word of mouth, the way a person spoke showed who he was, which is why speech runs through all seven verses. The chapter around them keeps to the same subject. It speaks of blessing and of violence (Proverbs 10:6), warns of the danger in many words (Proverbs 10:19), and lays out the reward of the righteous (Proverbs 10:16) and the ruin of the wicked (Proverbs 10:29).

The wise person of verse 8 is châkâm, a word for someone intelligent and skilful, whose insight shows in prudent and upright living. He is wise “in heart”, and the heart, lêb, is the whole inner person: mind, will and feelings together. So this wisdom goes all the way down, and it shows itself as a teachable spirit. The wise accept instruction, take it in and obey it, which is what James asks when he tells us to be doers of the word (James 1:22).

“Walking” in verse 9 is hâlak, the everyday verb for going along, which Scripture uses for a whole course of life: a person’s habits, conduct and direction. To walk “uprightly” is to walk in tôm, a word that means completeness, integrity or innocence. It is a life that is whole, honest and the same in private as in public. Such a person “walketh surely”. His conscience is clear and his footing is solid, so he goes through life free of the fear of exposure. “The integrity of the upright shall guide them” (Proverbs 11:3). The blessed man of Psalm 1:1–3 stands on the same ground, and Jesus draws the same contrast in his wise and foolish builders (Matthew 7:24–27).

To pervert one’s ways is ʻâqash, to twist or make crooked. The crooked path is one of dishonesty, manipulation and hidden sin, and the proverb tells where it ends: he “shall be known.” In a society where honour and a good name counted for so much, being known for what you really were meant public shame and the loss of trust.

The verb for winking in verse 10, qârats, means to pinch, and it is used of biting the lips or blinking the eyes. The wink in view here is a signal passed by someone who means harm. It was understood as a sign of secret plotting, of mockery, or of a shared scheme against another person, and it “causeth sorrow” to the one it is aimed at: shame, grief and trouble. Proverbs 6:12–15 describes a worthless man who speaks through deceitful gestures of this kind, and tells of his ruin.

The same thing is done today with a knowing glance, a sarcastic look, or a private message written to mock someone. Harm done quietly is still harm, and God holds us to account for it as he does for what is said aloud.

The second line repeats the close of verse 8 word for word: “but a prating fool shall fall.” So this proverb sets two wrongs side by side, where its neighbours set a right against a wrong. One man hurts others with barely a sound, and the other brings himself down with too many words. James writes at length about the power of the tongue and how hard it is to tame (James 3:5–10), and Paul gives the opposite of both men in a single phrase when he calls us to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

The mouth, peh, stands in verse 11 for a person’s speech. The righteous man is tsaddîyq, someone just and upright, whose life is in line with God’s standards. His mouth is a “well”, mâqôwr, a spring or fountain that keeps on flowing, and it is a well of “life”, chay, a word for what is alive and living.

Israel is a dry land, and a well there decided where people could settle and whether they survived. Everyone who first heard this proverb knew what a spring was worth. The words of a righteous person are like that for the people around him: a steady supply of truth, wisdom, encouragement and guidance that others can come back to. Proverbs uses the picture again when it says, “The law of the wise is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 13:14), and in Proverbs 8 wisdom herself calls out as a giver of life.

The proverb speaks about character as much as about words. The mouth brings out what the heart holds, as Jesus teaches when he says that the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart and that we will give account for our careless words (Matthew 12:34–37). A righteous heart gives life when it speaks because righteousness lives in it.

Hatred in verse 12 is sinʼâh, an active ill will that looks for a way to hurt or divide. It “stirreth up”, from ʻûwr, to wake or rouse, and what it wakes is mᵉdân, quarrels and disputes. Hatred goes looking for a fight and wakes conflicts that could have been left asleep. In Israel, where life was built around family, clan and community, a feud could weaken everyone.

Love here is ʼahăbâh, affection or love, set directly against hatred. It “covereth”, and the verb is kâçâh again, the same verb as in verse 11. There violence covers a mouth, and here love covers wrongs. The wrongs are real ones. The word for “sins” is peshaʻ, which means transgression or rebellion, an act of defiance. Love covers such things by forgiving them, by passing over an offence, and by declining to expose or keep bringing up another person’s fault. Proverbs says it again later: “He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends” (Proverbs 17:9).

The New Testament takes this up in many places. Peter writes that love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). Paul tells us to forgive “even as Christ forgave you” (Colossians 3:13), and in 1 Corinthians 13 he describes a love that is patient and kind and bears and endures all things. Jesus carries it as far as our enemies (Matthew 5:44). The proverb reaches beyond private friendships as well, because hatred stirs up strife in families, churches and nations, and love makes peace in all of them.

“Him that hath understanding” in verse 13 comes from bîyn, to understand or discern, to tell one thing from another. In such a person wisdom, chokmâh, the skill of living rightly, “is found” on the lips. Anyone who listens to him can discover it there. Proverbs says the same of the wise heart that guides the mouth (Proverbs 16:23) and of the tongue of the wise (Proverbs 15:2), and James writes of the wisdom that is from above (James 3:17). This understanding is practical. It is the ability to apply what is known and to judge soundly in real situations.

“Void of understanding” is a different Hebrew phrase, châçêr lêb, which is literally “lacking heart”. The lêb is the heart of verse 8, so the passage that opened with a man who is wise in heart now shows us a man with a heart that lacks.

To “lay up” is tsâphan, to hide, hoard or keep in reserve. The wise treat knowledge as treasure. They seek it out, guard it, and keep it ready for the day it is needed, which also means they think before they speak. Proverbs calls wisdom “the principal thing” (Proverbs 4:7) and tells us where it comes from: the LORD gives it (Proverbs 2:6). James puts the habit into a rule when he tells us to be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19).

The foolish man does the opposite, and his mouth “is near destruction”. The word is mᵉchittâh, which means ruin, a breaking down, or terror. His speech is impulsive and proud, and it keeps disaster close at hand. Quarrels, gossip, secrets given away and rash promises all come from it, and they cost him friends, money and peace. Proverbs says that death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21) and that the one who guards his mouth keeps his life (Proverbs 13:3).

Every good thing in these seven verses is found complete in Jesus. He is the one who is wise in heart, who kept his Father’s commandments (John 15:10) and came to do his Father’s will (John 6:38). He walked uprightly in the fullest sense, free of sin and with no deceit in his mouth (1 Peter 2:22), and he is himself the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). Scripture calls him the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). The wise lay up knowledge, and in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

His mouth is the well of life. He came full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and the crowds were astonished at the authority of his teaching (Matthew 7:28–29). He said that his words are spirit and life (John 6:63), Peter confessed that he has “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68), and he offers living water to everyone who thirsts (John 4:14).

The hard lines of the passage fall on him too, for our sake. He never caused sorrow by malice, and yet he became a man of sorrows who carried our griefs (Isaiah 53:3–5). The rod belongs on the back of the one who lacks understanding, and he bore the judgment our folly deserved when he was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). At the cross our crooked ways were known and dealt with in him, so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Men rejected him, and where the fool falls, he was raised up as the head of the corner (Psalm 118:22, Acts 4:11).

Above all, his is the love that covers all sins. Our love covers the wrongs done to us, and his love atones for sin before God. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and from the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). His command that we love one another as he has loved us (John 13:34) rests on that gift: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11). God gives his people the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Ephesians 1:17), and by him our hearts and our speech are changed.

These proverbs show us a God who cares about our words and about the heart they come from. He has made a world in which integrity is safe ground, hidden things come to light, and a teachable heart is the way into wisdom. That is good news for anyone who has been wronged in secret, and a sober word for all of us about what we say behind a hand or type in a message.

They also give us a picture of what our speech can be. A person who has taken in God’s word has something to give, and the people around him are refreshed by it as by a spring. The love of verse 12 is the strongest thing in the passage, because it ends quarrels that hatred would keep alive for years. We forgive as people who have been forgiven, and the love that covered our sins at the cross is the love we are given to pass on.

Even the rod has mercy in it. When our own folly brings pain, the LORD is able to use that pain to teach us, and he disciplines those he loves.