Verse Lens · Context pointer

Proverbs 23:7 Explained in Context

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

Selected verse

Verse 7. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

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

Role in This Section

This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink,…” against “his heart is not with thee”.

Read It With

  • Proverbs 23:6–9

Read Proverbs 23:7 with 23:6–9. Read alone, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith…” 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 “Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats”; by 23:9, it opens with “Speak not in the ears of a fool” and develops the line through “for he will despise the wisdom of thy words”. Together the unit concentrates on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, appetite, intoxication, desire, and self-government, emotion, resilience, grief, and inward life within “Sayings of the wise.”

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 23:6–9 — The calculating host and speech wasted on a fool
Sources used for this context pointer

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 23:6–9, 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 23:6-23:9

Open source ↗
Open the complete thought-unit research record
Open a verse without taking it out of context.

Try Proverbs 1:7, Prov 1:7, or Pr 1:7.

Choose book, chapter, and verse