Jump to a verse
Proverbs 23:22–25, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 23:22–25
Family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care — Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not…
Father and mother remain teachers even when they are old
Listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old. Buy the truth, and do not sell it; also wisdom, instruction, and understanding.
The pair is both parents. Old age does not cancel a mother's claim to honor. Despising her is treating her voice as expired. Buying truth means paying cost to get it and refusing to cash it out later for ease. Parental honor here is not unlimited: an adult is not required to obey a parent who commands harm.
Parents' joy is a child's wisdom, not a child's usefulness
The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, and the one who begets a wise child will have joy of him. Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her who bore you rejoice.
Gladness is righteous wisdom in the next generation. It is not a demand that a child fund a parent's status, stay in an unsafe house, or perform a life that makes relatives look successful. A barren or grieving parent is not accused by this wish.
How this should shape us
Honor aging parents without treating their authority as a blank check. Spend to get truth, and do not sell it. If you are a parent, let your joy be a child's wisdom rather than their usefulness to you.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 23:22–25 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.
Your explanation stays in this browser. It is not sent or saved.
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.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful readers disagree?
Best judgment: Interpreters disagree over how much literary meaning adjacent sentence sayings gain from small clusters. This package treats Proverbs 23:22–25 as a useful local cluster while preserving each saying's independent force and marking the boundary as revisable.
How certain? probableResearch 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 23:22–25, 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 23:22-23:25
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1152-1156, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 23:22–25
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 23:22–25 and the Sayings of the wise 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 23:22–25
Supports: Literal, metaphorical, ancient-practice, modern-effect, and positive-discipline review without erasing the ancient physical wording.
Chukwuma, HTS 81.1 (2025), pp. 3-5 on Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-14 and pp. 5-7 on positive discipline and safeguarding, as relevant to Proverbs 23:22–25
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 23:22–25, 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 23:22-23:25
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. 1152-1156, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 23:22–25
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 23:22–25 and the Sayings of the wise 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 23:22–25
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
Reading selected biblical proverbs in the light of corporal punishment in child upbringing
Helen C. Chukwuma
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 81.1, 2025
Supports: Literal, metaphorical, ancient-practice, modern-effect, and positive-discipline review without erasing the ancient physical wording.
Exact location: Chukwuma, HTS 81.1 (2025), pp. 3-5 on Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-14 and pp. 5-7 on positive discipline and safeguarding, as relevant to Proverbs 23:22–25
Open source ↗