Today’s Passage: Proverbs 23
We are still in that long stretch of the book the scholars call the sayings of the wise, and this chapter reads like an evening of them, an old teacher pulling his chair close and handing his son one hard-won counsel after another. He ranges over a whole life in these thirty-five verses, from the table of a powerful man to the raising of a child, from the ache of envy to the honoring of a mother grown old, and he ends, as a wise elder sometimes must, with a sober and unflinching look at what strong drink does to a person. But do not mistake this for a scattered heap of advice, for a single steady concern runs underneath it all: the son’s heart, and where he will finally set it. Twice in this chapter the father asks for that very thing, and once he says it plainest of all, give me your heart. Everything else here is the outworking of that one request, teaching a young person not to spend his heart on things that cannot keep it, on riches that fly away or pleasures that bite at the last, but to anchor it where it will hold, in the fear of the LORD and in the truth that is worth buying and never worth selling.
As you read, hold this: Riches sprout wings and fly away, but the one who keeps the fear of the LORD all day long has a future and a hope that will not be cut off.
Context The world of Proverbs 23
This part of Proverbs has its own flavor, different from the short two-line sayings that fill the middle of the book. Here the wise man is allowed to stretch out, to take four or five lines at a time to paint a whole scene, so that his warnings come to us not as bare rules but as little pictures we can stand inside. He seats us at a ruler’s banquet and tells us to watch ourselves among the delicacies. He sets a purse of money in our hands and then, before our eyes, lets it grow feathers and fly off like a bird. He carries us to the end of a life ruined by drink and lets us hear the poor man mumbling in his stupor. This is teaching by imagination, and it is meant to lodge in the memory the way a story does.
Underneath the pictures, the chapter keeps circling a few great themes. One is the emptiness of chasing wealth, for the father knows how a young person’s eyes can be dazzled by the rich man’s table and the rich man’s gain, and he wants his son to see through the shine to the nothing behind it. Another is the shaping of the heart through discipline and instruction, both the discipline a father gives a child and the truth a person must go out and buy for himself. A third is the danger of envy, that quiet poison that looks at sinners and wishes it could trade places with them, against which the father sets the only real cure, the fear of the LORD kept up all day long. And the last is a plain warning against the ruin that drunkenness brings, told at the end without relish and without detail, simply held up as a thing to be seen clearly and avoided. Hold these threads loosely as you read, and watch how the father keeps returning to that one deep request underneath them all, that his son would give him his heart.
Proverbs 23:1–8 (BSB)
¹ When you sit down to dine with a ruler, consider carefully what is set before you, ² and put a knife to your throat if you possess a great appetite. ³ Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive. ⁴ Do not wear yourself out to get rich; be wise enough to restrain yourself. ⁵ When you glance at wealth, it disappears, for it makes wings for itself and flies like an eagle to the sky. ⁶ Do not eat the bread of a stingy man, and do not crave his delicacies; ⁷ for he is keeping track, inwardly counting the cost. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. ⁸ You will vomit up what little you have eaten and waste your pleasant words.
The father opens where a young man’s ambition often first catches fire, at the table of the powerful, and his counsel is wonderfully shrewd. When you find yourself dining with a ruler, he says, look hard at what is set before you, and if your appetite is large, put a knife to your own throat, which is his vivid way of telling the boy to govern his hunger before it governs him. Do not crave the rich man’s delicacies, for that food is deceptive, a spread that looks like favor but may be a snare, kindness offered with a hook inside it. The wise learn to sit at such a table without losing their heads, to enjoy without being bought, because they can see that not every fine thing set before them is truly a gift.
Then the father widens the lesson from the ruler’s table to the whole restless business of chasing money, and here he gives us one of the great pictures of the chapter. Do not wear yourself out to get rich, he says, be wise enough to know when to stop, and then he shows us why the whole race is folly. You fix your eyes on wealth, and in the very moment you look, it is gone, for riches grow wings for themselves and fly off like an eagle into the sky. What a thing to have seen so clearly so long ago, that the fortune a man kills himself to gather can vanish in an afternoon, sprouting feathers and lifting into the blue while he stands there empty-handed. It is not that money is evil, but that it is untrustworthy, here today and airborne tomorrow, and a life spent worn out in its pursuit has been spent chasing a bird. The father closes this first handful by returning to the table, but now it is the table of a stingy man, one who urges you to eat and drink while all the while his heart is somewhere else, secretly counting the cost of every bite. Take nothing from such a host, the father warns, for his welcome is a lie, and the good words you spend on him are wasted breath. In all of it he is teaching his son the same watchfulness, to see past the food and the flattery to the heart that is or is not really with him.
Proverbs 23:9–14 (BSB)
⁹ Do not speak to a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. ¹⁰ Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless, ¹¹ for their Redeemer is strong; He will take up their case against you. ¹² Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge. ¹³ Do not withhold discipline from a child; although you strike him with a rod, he will not die. ¹⁴ Strike him with a rod, and you will deliver his soul from Sheol.
Now the father turns to how a person handles others and how a person is himself shaped, and he begins with a quiet realism about the fool. Do not waste your best wisdom on a man who will only despise it, he says, not out of contempt but out of good sense, for there is a time to speak and a time to keep your pearls in your pocket. Then his eye falls on the weak and the unprotected, and his tone sharpens. Do not move an ancient boundary stone, he warns, do not creep over the line into the fields of the fatherless, for those without a father to defend them are not without a Defender. Their Redeemer is strong, he says, and He will take up their case, and there is real comfort and real warning folded together in that line, that the God of heaven appoints Himself the advocate of the orphan and will Himself press the charge against anyone who preys upon the defenseless. A person schooled in the fear of the LORD keeps his hands off what belongs to the weak, because he knows Who is watching over them.
Then the father comes to the shaping of the heart, and he speaks it two ways. First to the son himself: apply your heart to instruction, he says, and bend your ears to words of knowledge, for wisdom is not poured into a passive vessel but taken up by a heart that leans in and works to receive it. And then he speaks of the son’s own children, and here we meet one of those counsels the modern ear may find hard, the charge not to withhold discipline from a child. We should hear it as the ancient world heard it, not as permission for harshness, which the book everywhere forbids, but as a father insisting that real love does not leave a child to raise himself. Loving correction, given in measure and in tenderness, is one of the ways a parent guards a young soul from the far greater harms that undisciplined folly leads to. The father is not commending cruelty; he is warning against the false mercy that lets a child wander unchecked toward ruin, and he sets over it the sober aim of the whole thing, to deliver the child’s soul from the grave. Discipline, rightly given, is love doing the hard work of shaping a life while it can still be shaped.
Proverbs 23:15–18 (BSB)
¹⁵ My son, if your heart is wise, my own heart will indeed rejoice. ¹⁶ My inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak what is right. ¹⁷ Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always continue in the fear of the LORD. ¹⁸ For surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.
Here the father lets his own heart show, and it is worth slowing down to feel how tender this is. My son, he says, if your heart is wise, then my heart, my very heart, will rejoice, and my inmost being will thrill when I hear your lips speaking what is right. This is not a stern teacher grading a pupil; this is a father whose own gladness rises and falls with the goodness of his child, who wants his son to be wise not merely for the son’s sake but because nothing on earth will make the old man happier. And out of that love comes the warning at the center of the chapter, aimed at a danger that eats quietly at the young: do not let your heart envy sinners. The father knows how it goes, how a person watches those who cut every corner and break every rule and seem, for a while, to prosper by it, and how the watching curdles into a wish to be like them. Against that slow poison he sets one steady antidote, to continue in the fear of the LORD all the day long, not in bursts but continually, keeping the LORD before you from morning to night so that there is no idle hour for envy to grow.
And then he gives the reason, and it is one of the most quietly powerful lines in the book: surely there is a acharit, pronounced akh-ar-EET. Strong's H319, end, outcome, latter part, future. This is the word that ties the two ends of the chapter together, and once you notice it you cannot unsee it. It means the end of a thing, the latter part, what comes after, the way it all turns out. When the father tells his son not to envy sinners because surely there is a future, this is the word he uses, promising a good final chapter, a hope waiting at the end of the road for those who fear the LORD. But the same word returns near the close of the chapter, in the warning about wine, where he says that in the end it bites like a snake. There too it is the same word, the end of the matter, the way it finally turns out, and the father is teaching his son to judge everything by its end rather than by its first taste. The rich man’s table looks like favor, but consider its end. The sinner’s success looks enviable, but consider its end. The cup looks bright and goes down smoothly, but consider its end. And over against all of these bitter ends the father sets the one ending that is sweet, the future and the hope of the person who has kept the fear of the LORD all his days. Wisdom, in the end, is very largely the habit of asking where a thing is going, and then choosing by the answer. , and your hope will not be cut off. The envy of sinners is really a failure of sight, a looking only at the near shine and never at the far end, and the father corrects the eyes by lifting them to what lies ahead. There is an end to things, he says, there is a latter day when accounts come due and the crooked prosperity of the wicked runs out, and for the one who fears the LORD there is a future that does not disappoint and a hope no one can sever. That is the answer to envy, not gritted teeth but a settled confidence that the person walking with God is walking toward something, and that the something is good. The rich man’s fortune sprouts wings and flies away, but this hope stays.
Proverbs 23:19–21 (BSB)
¹⁹ Listen, my son, and be wise, and guide your heart on the right course. ²⁰ Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat. ²¹ For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe them in rags.
The father sounds his call for attention again, and notice what he asks the son to do with what he hears, to guide his own heart onto the right course. Wisdom is not a track a person is dropped onto against his will; it is a road the heart must be steered down, and the father is teaching his son the daily work of keeping his own heart pointed the right way. Then he names two appetites that pull hard in the wrong direction, giving oneself to too much wine and gorging on food, and here he sounds the first note of a warning he will return to at length before the chapter ends. Do not join that company, he says, and his reason is plainly practical: this road runs downhill to poverty, and the man who lives for the next indulgence will end up in rags, his substance drowsed and drained away. It is a brief, sober word, dropped in here almost quietly, and the father lets it sit for now before he comes back to take it up in full. But already the lesson is the same one the whole chapter keeps pressing, that appetites which promise pleasure in the moment must be weighed by where they finally lead.
Proverbs 23:22–28 (BSB)
²² Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old. ²³ Invest in truth and never sell it—in wisdom and instruction and understanding. ²⁴ The father of a righteous man will greatly rejoice, and he who fathers a wise son will delight in him. ²⁵ May your father and mother be glad, and may she who gave you birth rejoice! ²⁶ My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes delight in my ways. ²⁷ For a prostitute is a deep pit, and an adulteress is a narrow well. ²⁸ Like a robber she lies in wait and multiplies the faithless among men.
Now the father speaks of honor, and there is a lovely tenderness in how he does it. Listen to your father who gave you life, he says, and do not despise your mother when she is old, and you can feel the whole span of a life folded into that one line, the parents who once carried and taught a child now grown gray themselves and needing to be honored still. Wisdom does not outgrow its mother. And right in the middle of this appeal the father sets the ringing charge that gives the chapter its heart: buy the truth and never sell it, and with it wisdom and instruction and understanding. Truth is something to be sought and paid for and held onto at any price, treasure worth spending everything to gain and worth nothing anyone could offer to give up. A person may be tempted to trade it away for comfort, or for approval, or for the passing shine of easier things, but the wise man, having once bought the truth, holds it as a possession he will never sell. Then the father returns to that gladness we heard before, the joy of a parent over a wise child, praying that his son’s life would be the very thing that makes a father and mother rejoice, that she who gave him birth would be glad she did.
And at the center of it all he says the thing the whole chapter has been leaning toward, the plainest and most personal words a father can speak: my son, give me your heart. Not your outward compliance, not your grudging obedience, but your heart, the deep spring of who you are, and let your eyes delight to follow the way I have walked. Everything else in this chapter is really the unfolding of that one request. And because he has asked for the heart, the father must warn about what would steal it, so he closes this section with a sober word about the ruin that unfaithful desire brings, calling it a deep pit and a narrow well, the kind of trap a person falls into and cannot climb out of, lying in wait like a robber to take what it can. He does not linger on it or paint it in colors; he simply names it as a pit, a danger to the very heart he has just asked his son to give him, and moves on. The point is not to dwell on the sin but to guard the heart, which is the one thing the father is after from beginning to end.
Proverbs 23:29–35 (BSB)
²⁹ Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has needless wounds? Who has bloodshot eyes? ³⁰ Those who linger over wine, who go to taste mixed drinks. ³¹ Do not gaze at wine while it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. ³² In the end it bites like a snake and stings like a viper. ³³ Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind will utter perversities. ³⁴ You will be like one sleeping on the high seas or lying on the top of a mast: ³⁵ “They struck me, but I feel no pain! They beat me, but I did not know it! When can I wake up to search for another drink?”
The father has saved his fullest warning for the last, and he gives it the way a wise elder should, plainly and without relish, holding a hard thing up to the light so his son can see it clearly and steer well clear of it. He opens not with a rule but with a riddle, a string of questions that circle a single sorry figure. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who is forever in quarrels, forever complaining, wounded for no good reason, red-eyed and worn? And then he answers his own riddle in a single line: those who linger too long over the cup, who go looking for the next strong drink. It is a gentle and almost mournful way to begin, letting the son see the misery first and only then naming its cause, so that the warning arrives already carrying its own weight of sadness.
Then the father does the thing he has done all through this chapter, holding up the sweet beginning and the bitter acharit side by side. Do not even gaze at the wine, he says, when it glows red and sparkles in the cup and slides down so smoothly, for he knows the danger begins in the looking, in the shine and the ease of that first pleasant taste. But he will not let the picture stop there, at the sparkle, because the sparkle is only half the truth. In the end, he says, in the acharit, it bites like a snake and stings like a viper, and suddenly the bright cup has fangs. He describes plainly and briefly what the road leads to, the confusion of a mind no longer its own, the strange seeing and reckless speaking, the man tossed about as helplessly as someone trying to sleep on the deck of a ship in a storm, and finally that saddest picture of all, a person so far gone that he does not even feel the blows that fall on him and, waking, can think of nothing but finding another drink. The father does not sensationalize any of it; he simply lets the plain misery speak, the loss of dignity, the loss of clear sight, the sad captivity of a heart handed over to a thing that has begun to bite. And that is the whole point of the chapter, gathered up in this closing scene. The father has been pleading all along, give me your heart, and here he shows his son one more thing that would take that heart captive if it could, one more sweet beginning with a bitter end, one more reason to weigh every pleasure not by its first taste but by where it finally leads. Riches sprout wings and fly away, and the bright cup turns in the end to a serpent’s bite, but the heart kept in the fear of the LORD, all the day long, has a future and a hope that will not be cut off.
Study notes Going deeper
The two warnings this chapter presses hardest, against wearing yourself out for riches and against giving your heart to drink, both reach far into the rest of Scripture, and it is worth following each a little way. When the father tells his son that wealth sprouts wings and flies off like an eagle, he is teaching the very lesson the Lord Jesus would one day set at the center of His own words about money, warning against pouring out a life to store up what cannot last.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19–21 (BSB)
Hear how the Lord takes the father’s picture and completes it. Proverbs shows the treasure flying away; Jesus shows us where to send it instead, and then names the deepest reason of all, that our hearts always follow our treasure home. The father in Proverbs asked his son to give him his heart and warned him not to spend it on riches that fly; the Lord shows exactly why that matters, because wherever a person lays up his treasure, his heart will surely go and live there too. And the chapter’s closing warning against the bright and biting cup is taken up as plainly in the New Testament, where the same danger is named and the same better fullness is held out in its place.
"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to reckless indiscretion. Instead, be filled with the Spirit." Ephesians 5:18 (BSB)
There is the father’s warning again, carried across the centuries into the life of the church, that wine given the mastery leads only to reckless ruin. But notice what the apostle sets in its place, not merely a prohibition but a greater filling, the fullness of the Spirit of God. The heart the father kept asking for is a heart made to be filled with something, and the whole counsel of Scripture agrees that it will be filled either with what bites at the last or with the Spirit who gives it life. So this old chapter of a father’s evening counsel turns out to be teaching the very things the whole Bible cares about most, to hold truth as treasure and never sell it, to weigh every pleasure by its end and not its first taste, and above all to keep the heart, in the fear of the LORD, for the One who alone can fill it. Riches sprout wings and fly away, but the one who keeps the fear of the LORD all day long has a future and a hope that will not be cut off.