Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Proverbs 10:22 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 22. 22The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it”.
Hidden hatred, slander, and a flood of words are all named foolish
This verse is one part of that explanation in Proverbs 10:18–23. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.
Read It With
- Proverbs 10:18–23
Read Proverbs 10:22 with 10:18–23. Read alone, “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: contributes the claim, image, or instruction “He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool”; by 10:23, it uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is as sport to a fool to do mischief” against “a man of understanding hath wisdom”. Together the unit concentrates on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 10:18–23 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.” Its lines concentrate on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it”.
Follow the Context
- Opening (10:18): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool”.
- Development (10:18–23): adjacent lines test speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power through parallelism, contrast, motive, image, or consequence.
- Close (10:23): the unit uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is as sport to a fool to do mischief” against “a man of understanding hath wisdom”, creating the next supported pause.
What This Verse Is Not Saying
Proverbs 10:22 does not allow “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no…” to become a universal promise, complete policy, diagnosis, insult, or authorization detached from Proverbs 10:18–23. The verse does not promise prosperity, validate predatory gain, or blame people whose work, health, land, or livelihood has been harmed.
What Remains True
Wisdom begins with reverent accountability to the LORD and refuses to make human insight self-sufficient. In Proverbs 10:22, that bounded truth is expressed through “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no…,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Bring the decision under truthful worship, moral accountability, and correction rather than using religious language to shield preference or power. Proverbs 10:22 names that responsibility through “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no…,” so the response must remain accountable to the person, action, comparison, or consequence in this line.
Teach It Back
Explain Proverbs 10:22's exact role in Proverbs 10:18–23. Distinguish pattern from guarantee, include “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich,…,” name one uncertainty, and explicitly reject one harmful use.
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Continue in Context
Read the complete section for the connected explanation and how it should shape life. This verse is a doorway into that passage, not a saying that stands alone.
Read Proverbs 10:18–23 — Speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence — He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that…Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
The saying celebrates the LORD's blessing without identifying every rich person as blessed or every poor person as unblessed; the Hebrew relation of the final clause is translated in more than one way.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Exact location: Proverbs 10:18–23, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Proverbs
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 10:18-10:23
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Proverbs with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
Exact location: NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1103-1107, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 10:18–23
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Proverbs
K. T. Aitken
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Exact location: Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 10:18–23 and the First Solomonic sentence-saying collection outline
Open source ↗scholarly monograph chapter abstract and metadata
Context in the Sayings Collections
Stuart Weeks
Oxford University Press, in Early Israelite Wisdom, 2000
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Exact location: Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 10:18–23
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
The situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth in the Book of Proverbs
G. H. Wittenberg
Scriptura 21, 1987; open archive 2020
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Exact location: Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 10:18–23
Open source ↗