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Proverbs 19:5–8, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 19:5–8
Speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence — A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that…
A false witness will not be unpunished; a liar will not escape
A false witness will not be unpunished, and whoever speaks lies will not escape. Many seek a ruler's favor, and everyone is a friend to a gift-giver. The legal line is absolute in moral intent: lying testimony has a reckoning. Escape is what the liar is counting on and will not keep. Gift-friends and prince-seekers are the social weather around power. Description is not permission.
Even brothers may hate the poor; wisdom is how a person loves their own life
All the relatives of the poor hate them; how much more do their friends go far off. They pursue them with words, but they are gone. Whoever gets wisdom loves their own soul; whoever keeps understanding will find good. The proverb tells the truth about abandonment. It does not instruct the family to hate, and it does not blame the poor for being left. Words that chase a disappearing friend are the ache of being poor in a mercenary world. Getting wisdom is self-love of the right kind, not self-absorption, and finding good is its fruit, not a prosperity guarantee.
How this should shape us
Do not lie in testimony, even when a gift or a ruler's face would pay you to. Move toward the poor relative the others are leaving. Get wisdom as if your own life were the thing you were finally deciding to love.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 19:5–8 in your own words. Identify its form and collection, trace one line from role through contextual meaning and enduring truth to application, name one uncertainty, and reject one misuse explicitly.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Research trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Proverbs 19:5–8, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 19:5-19:8
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1136-1140, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 19:5–8
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 19:5–8 and the First Solomonic sentence-saying collection outline
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 19:5–8
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
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 19:5–8, 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 19:5-19:8
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. 1136-1140, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 19:5–8
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 19:5–8 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 19:5–8
Open source ↗