Verse Lens · Concise explanation

Proverbs 21:22 Explained in Context

Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.

Selected verse

Verse 22. A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof.

King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions

Quick Meaning

This verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof”.

Wisdom can scale a city that strength was sure of; a guarded mouth guards a life

This verse is one part of that explanation in Proverbs 21:22–25. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.

Read It With

  • Proverbs 21:22–25

Read Proverbs 21:22 with 21:22–25. Read alone, “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the…” 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 “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof”; by 21:25, it uses two-part parallelism to place “The desire of the slothful killeth him” beside “for his hands refuse to labour”. Together the unit concentrates on wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, violence, predation, conflict, and protection within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”

Why This Verse Appears Here

Proverbs 21:22–25 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, violence, predation, conflict, and protection, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof”.

What Remains True

Wisdom is practiced moral perception: learning how words, desires, habits, relationships, and power ordinarily tend toward life or harm. In Proverbs 21:22, that bounded truth is expressed through “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the…,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.

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 21:22–25 — Wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception — A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth…
Sources used for this Verse Lens

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 21:22–25, 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 21:22-21:25

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. 1144-1148, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 21:22–25

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