Proverbs 14:16 Explained in Context

Read It With

• Proverbs 14:15–19

Read Proverbs 14:16 with 14:15–19. Read alone, “A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: uses contrastive parallelism to place “The simple believeth every word” against “the prudent man looketh well to his going”; by 14:19, it uses two-part parallelism to place “The evil bow before the good” beside “and the wicked at the gates of the righteous”. Together the unit concentrates on wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, planning, counsel, providence, and limited control within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”

Why This Verse Appears Here

Proverbs 14:15–19 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.” Its lines concentrate on wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, planning, counsel, providence, and limited control, 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 “A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil” against “the fool rageth, and is confident”.