Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Proverbs 20:29 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 29. 29The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse opens with “The glory of young men is their strength” and develops the line through “and the beauty of old men is the gray head”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 20:26–30
Proverbs 20:26–30 is the required frame for Proverbs 20:29. Here the saying opens with “The glory of young men is their strength” and develops the line through “and the beauty of old men is the gray head”; its collection setting controls whether the words describe a pattern, warning, invitation, or bounded command.
Why This Verse Appears Here
This verse opens with “The glory of young men is their strength” and develops the line through “and the beauty of old men is the gray head”. This contributes necessary evidence to “Kingship, public authority, and accountable rule — A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel...,” where kingship, public authority, and accountable rule, generosity, neighbor-care, and material responsibility, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception are read together without erasing the sentence saying's own force.
Follow the Context
- Opening (20:26): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel over them”.
- Development (20:26–30): adjacent lines test kingship, public authority, and accountable rule, generosity, neighbor-care, and material responsibility, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception through parallelism, contrast, motive, image, or consequence.
- Close (20:30): the unit opens with “The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil” and develops the line through “so do stripes the inward parts of the belly”, creating the next supported pause.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old...”
In plain language: gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency
This verse opens with “The glory of young men is their strength” and develops the line through “and the beauty of old men is the gray head”.
Why it matters: This wording carries interpretive, pastoral, or misuse risk requiring the full unit and explicit limits.
How certain? strongWhat This Verse Is Not Saying
The saying does not demean women, blame targets of exploitation, excuse sexual coercion, impose a universal domestic role, or make male desire the measure of a woman's worth.
What Remains True
The gendered sayings address fidelity, desire, agency, speech, and household life within an androcentric ancient setting; they must not be generalized into contempt for women. In Proverbs 20:29, that bounded truth is expressed through “The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old...,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Practice consent, mutual fidelity, truthful boundaries, economic respect, and accountability for the person who holds greater social power. For Proverbs 20:29, preserve the sequence: verse role (opens with “The glory of young men is their strength” and develops the line through “and the beauty of old men is the gray head”) -> contextual meaning in Proverbs 20:26–30 -> proportionate truth -> this accountable response.
Teach It Back
Explain Proverbs 20:29's exact role in Proverbs 20:26–30. Distinguish pattern from guarantee, include “The glory of young men is their strength:...,” name one uncertainty, and explicitly reject one harmful use.
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Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 20:26–30 — Kingship, public authority, and accountable rule — A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel...Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
This sentence saying states a context-shaped moral pattern. Its small-cluster boundary and degree of generality remain reviewable; exceptional outcomes do not make the observation meaningless or turn it into a guarantee.
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 20:26–30, 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 20:26-20:30
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. 1140-1144, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 20:26–30
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 20:26–30 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 20:26–30
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
The situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth in the Book of Proverbs
G. H. Wittenberg
Scriptura 21, 1987; open archive 2020
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Exact location: Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 20:26–30
Open source ↗