Verse Lens · Context pointer
Proverbs 13:23 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 23. 23Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Role in This Section
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “Much food is in the tillage of the poor” against “there is that is destroyed for want of judgment”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 13:20–23
Read Proverbs 13:23 with 13:20–23. Read alone, “Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” against “a companion of fools shall be destroyed”; by 13:23, it uses contrastive parallelism to place “Much food is in the tillage of the poor” against “there is that is destroyed for want of judgment”. Together the unit concentrates on justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation, wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power, friendship, neighbor-love, loyalty, and boundaries within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why It Needs Context
The line's necessary work is contextual: it uses contrastive parallelism to place “Much food is in the tillage of the poor” against “there is that is destroyed for want of judgment”. The surrounding unit supplies the comparison, affected people, and outcome required for interpretation.
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 13:20–23 — Justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation — He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a…Sources used for this context pointer
How certain is this explanation? strong
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 13:20–23, 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 13:20-13:23
Open source ↗