Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Proverbs 14:11 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 11. 11The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “The house of the wicked shall be overthrown” against “the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish”.
A heart knows its own bitterness; a stranger cannot manage someone else's joy
This verse is one part of that explanation in Proverbs 14:10–14. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.
Read It With
- Proverbs 14:10–14
Read Proverbs 14:11 with 14:10–14. Read alone, “The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: uses two-part parallelism to place “The heart knoweth his own bitterness” beside “and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy”; by 14:14, it opens with “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways” and develops the line through “and a good man shall be satisfied from himself”. Together the unit concentrates on emotion, resilience, grief, and inward life, truthful testimony, honest measures, and integrity, family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 14:10–14 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.” Its lines concentrate on emotion, resilience, grief, and inward life, truthful testimony, honest measures, and integrity, family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care, 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 “The house of the wicked shall be overthrown” against “the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish”.
What Remains True
Reliable testimony, honest measurement, and integrity protect relationships and public life from manipulation. In Proverbs 14:11, that bounded truth is expressed through “The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle…,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Keep accurate records, disclose conflicts, verify claims, and correct material errors without favoritism. Proverbs 14:11 names that responsibility through “The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle…,” so the response must remain accountable to the person, action, comparison, or consequence in this line.
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 14:10–14 — Emotion, resilience, grief, and inward life — The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth…Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
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 14:10–14, 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 14:10-14:14
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. 1118-1121, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 14:10–14
Open source ↗