Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Proverbs 23:17 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 17. 17Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “Let not thine heart envy sinners” against “be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long”.
Envy of sinners is displaced by a settled fear of the LORD
This verse is one part of that explanation in Proverbs 23:17–18. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.
Read It With
- Proverbs 23:17–18
Read Proverbs 23:17 with 23:17–18. Read alone, “Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: uses contrastive parallelism to place “Let not thine heart envy sinners” against “be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long”; by 23:18, it uses two-part parallelism to place “For surely there is an end” beside “and thine expectation shall not be cut off”. Together the unit concentrates on reverent accountability before the LORD, life, death, safety, and the long direction of choices within “Sayings of the wise.”
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 23:17–18 continues “Instruction, correction, and formation — Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the…” by carrying “Reverent accountability before the LORD — Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear…” within the same sustained discourse, admonition, numbered form, or poem. Within that relationship, this verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “Let not thine heart envy sinners” against “be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long”.
What Remains True
Wisdom begins with reverent accountability to the LORD and refuses to make human insight self-sufficient. In Proverbs 23:17, that bounded truth is expressed through “Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of…,” 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 23:17–18 — Reverent accountability before the LORD — Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear…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 23:17–18, 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 23:17-23:18
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 23:17–18
Open source ↗