CHAPTER 10

The Proverbs of Solomon Begin — Wise Son, Foolish Son

Here the book shifts genre. After nine chapters of sustained discourse, Proverbs 10 opens the long central collection of short, independent two-line sayings that runs through chapter 29. Most work by antithetic parallelism — the second line contrasts with the first — setting the wise against the foolish, the righteous against the wicked, verse after verse, so the reader is trained to see the pattern everywhere in ordinary life.

1 ‘A wise son maketh a glad father; but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother’ — the first proverb of the collection returns to the family, exactly where the book began, showing character as something with direct emotional weight on the people who raised you.

2 ‘Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but righteousness delivereth from death’ — the comparison isn't wealth versus poverty but ill-gotten gain versus integrity, and only one of the two is credited with actually saving a life.

3 ‘Jehovah will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish; but he thrusteth away the desire of the wicked’ — provision and denial are both attributed directly to God's active involvement, not left to chance.

4 ‘He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich’ — the first of many proverbs in this section linking diligence to prosperity, a plain, repeated observation rather than an absolute guarantee.

5 ‘He that gathereth in summer is a wise son; but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame’ — timing matters as much as effort; the same work done at the wrong season is treated as a failure of wisdom, not just of labor.

6 ‘Blessings are upon the head of the righteous; but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked’ — what rests visibly on a person — blessing or violence — is shown as the natural residue of their whole way of life.

7 ‘The memory of the righteous is blessed; but the name of the wicked shall rot’ — reputation outlives the person; Proverbs takes seriously that how you are remembered is itself a consequence worth caring about now.

8 ‘The wise in heart will receive commandments; but a prating fool shall fall’ — receptiveness to instruction and compulsive talking are set against each other as opposite postures toward correction.

9 ‘He that walketh uprightly walketh surely; but he that perverteth his ways shall be known’ — integrity is pictured as stability underfoot, while crookedness is destined to be exposed, whether quickly or eventually.

10 ‘He that winketh with the eye causeth sorrow; but a prating fool shall fall’ — the silent, manipulative signal (compare 6:13) and the compulsively talkative fool are both shown to cause harm, just through opposite excesses of speech and silence.

11 ‘The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life; but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked’ — the tongue is pictured as a source, either life-giving or violent, that reveals what's actually flowing from within.

12 ‘Hatred stirreth up strifes; but love covereth all transgressions’ — quoted almost directly in 1 Peter 4:8; the same offense can either be fanned into ongoing conflict or absorbed and let go, depending entirely on which posture meets it.

13 ‘In the lips of him that hath discernment wisdom is found; but a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding’ — discernment is rewarded with respected speech, while its absence, the proverb bluntly notes, tends to invite correction by force.

14 ‘Wise men lay up knowledge; but the mouth of the foolish is a present destruction’ — the wise stockpile something useful for later, while the fool's mouth causes immediate damage in the present moment.

15 ‘The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their poverty’ — a plain, sociological observation about vulnerability, not a moral endorsement; later proverbs in the book will complicate any simple equation of wealth with righteousness.

16 ‘The labor of the righteous tendeth to life; the increase of the wicked, to sin’ — the same word, 'increase' or 'produce,' describes both, but its direction — toward life or toward more sin — depends on the character behind it.

17 ‘He is in the way of life that heedeth correction; but he that forsaketh reproof erreth’ — correction accepted is pictured as a path, not a punishment; refusing it is what actually causes a person to go astray.

18 ‘He that hideth hatred is of lying lips; and he that uttereth a slander is a fool’ — concealed hostility and open slander are named as two versions of the same dishonesty, one hidden and one spoken.

19 ‘In the multitude of words there wanteth not transgression; but he that refraineth his lips doeth wisely’ — talking more increases the statistical odds of saying something wrong; restraint is treated as a wisdom skill in its own right.

20 ‘The tongue of the righteous is as choice silver; the heart of the wicked is little worth’ — the value comparison shifts here from speech to the heart behind it, showing the two are ultimately judged by the same standard.

21 ‘The lips of the righteous feed many; but fools die for lack of understanding’ — righteous speech is pictured as nourishing to a whole community, while the fool's own deficiency proves fatal to himself alone.

22 ‘The blessing of Jehovah, it maketh rich; and he addeth no sorrow therewith’ — a deliberate contrast with verse 4's diligence — some prosperity is simply gift, not wage, and comes without the anxious strings human effort often attaches.

23 ‘It is as sport to a fool to do wickedness; and so is wisdom to a man of understanding’ — each finds their natural pleasure in a different place; wickedness and wisdom are both described as something a person can come to actually enjoy.

24 ‘The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted’ — what each secretly dreads or hopes for is shown moving toward fulfillment, in opposite directions.

25 ‘When the whirlwind passeth, the wicked is no more; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation’ — sudden catastrophe reveals which of the two was actually built to last.

26 ‘As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him’ — two sharply unpleasant sensory images capture exactly how frustrating it is to depend on someone unreliable.

27 ‘The fear of Jehovah prolongeth days; but the years of the wicked shall be shortened’ — the book's recurring promise of longevity is restated, tied once more to reverence for God rather than mere caution.

28 ‘The hope of the righteous shall be gladness; but the expectation of the wicked shall perish’ — what a person looks forward to is only as reliable as the foundation it's built on.

29 ‘The way of Jehovah is a stronghold to the upright; but it is a destruction to the workers of iniquity’ — the very same reality — God's ordered way of the world — functions as shelter for one group and ruin for the other.

30 ‘The righteous shall never be removed; but the wicked shall not dwell in the land’ — stability of home and place, a deeply covenantal image throughout the Old Testament, is tied directly to character.

31 ‘The mouth of the righteous bringeth forth wisdom; but the perverse tongue shall be cut off’ — productive, wise speech versus speech that is eventually silenced — what a mouth habitually produces determines its own future.

32 ‘The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable; but the mouth of the wicked knoweth what is perverse’ — the chapter closes on the same theme it has circled back to repeatedly: speech as the clearest evidence of the character underneath it.