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Proverbs 24:21–22, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 24:21–22
Kingship, public authority, and accountable rule — My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not…
Fear of the LORD and the king are paired against restless revolt for its own sake
My son, fear the LORD and the king, and do not meddle with those who are given to change, for their calamity will rise suddenly, and who knows the ruin of them both?
Fear here is reverent accountability, not terror as a civic technique. The king is public authority in this saying's world. Given to change are people addicted to upheaval, not every reformer and not everyone who leaves an abusive order. Sudden ruin is the risk of joining a restless plot, not a ban on lawful resistance to murderous power.
The saying is not a blank check for tyrants
Fear the LORD first. A king who requires what the LORD forbids is not being given a second god. Meddling with professional agitators is the danger named, not petition, protest against injustice, or protecting the weak. Ruin of them both warns that unstable companions and the powers they provoke can crush bystanders.
Who knows is humility about how fast a political game can turn. It is not a command to baptize every throne.
How this should shape us
Honor God and ordinary public order without treating a ruler as sacred. Stay out of restless schemes that love upheaval more than justice. When authority commands harm, fear of the LORD has the first claim.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 24:21–22 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.
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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 24:21–22 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 24:21–22, 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 24:21-24:22
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1156-1161, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 24:21–22
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 24:21–22 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 24:21–22
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 24:21–22, 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 24:21-24:22
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. 1156-1161, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 24:21–22
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 24:21–22 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 24:21–22
Open source ↗