Proverbs 10:14 Explained in Context

Read It With

• Proverbs 10:12–17

Read Proverbs 10:14 with 10:12–17. Read alone, “Wise men lay up knowledge: but the mouth of the foolish is near…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: uses contrastive parallelism to place “Hatred stirreth up strifes” against “love covereth all sins”; by 10:17, it uses contrastive parallelism to place “He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction” against “he that refuseth reproof erreth”. Together the unit concentrates on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, instruction, correction, and formation, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”

Why This Verse Appears Here

Proverbs 10:12–17 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.” Its lines concentrate on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, instruction, correction, and formation, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “Wise men lay up knowledge” against “the mouth of the foolish is near destruction”.