Verse Lens · Context pointer
Proverbs 16:20 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 20. 20He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Role in This Section
This verse opens with “He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good” and develops the line through “and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 16:18–22
Read Proverbs 16:20 with 16:18–22. Read alone, “He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso…” 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 “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”; by 16:22, it uses contrastive parallelism to place “Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath…” against “the instruction of fools is folly”. Together the unit concentrates on humility, teachability, pride, and reputation, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, reverent accountability before the LORD within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why It Needs Context
The line's necessary work is contextual: it opens with “He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good” and develops the line through “and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he”. 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 16:18–22 — Humility, teachability, pride, and reputation — Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit…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 16:18–22, 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 16:18-16:22
Open source ↗