Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Proverbs 25:2 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 2. 2It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing” against “the honour of kings is to search out a matter”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 25:2–3
Read Proverbs 25:2 inside Proverbs 25:2–3: it uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing” against “the honour of kings is to search out a matter”. The unit then locates that line within humility, teachability, pride, and reputation, kingship, public authority, and accountable rule rather than treating it as a free-standing formula.
Why This Verse Appears Here
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing” against “the honour of kings is to search out a matter”. This contributes necessary evidence to “Humility, teachability, pride, and reputation — It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour...,” where humility, teachability, pride, and reputation, kingship, public authority, and accountable rule are read together without erasing the sentence saying's own force.
Follow the Context
- Opening (25:2): the unit uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing” against “the honour of kings is to search out a matter”.
- Development (25:2–3): adjacent lines test humility, teachability, pride, and reputation, kingship, public authority, and accountable rule through parallelism, contrast, motive, image, or consequence.
- Close (25:3): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable”, creating the next supported pause.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of...”
In plain language: humility, teachability, pride, and reputation
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing” against “the honour of kings is to search out a matter”.
Why it matters: This wording carries interpretive, pastoral, or misuse risk requiring the full unit and explicit limits.
How certain? strongWhat This Verse Is Not Saying
The saying does not justify humiliation, low self-worth, social erasure, or demanding submission from someone with less power.
What Remains True
Teachability and truthful self-knowledge are safer than status-protection, self-exaltation, or contempt for correction. In Proverbs 25:2, that bounded truth is expressed through “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of...,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Invite specific feedback, test your assumptions, share credit, and repair the effects of pride rather than performing modesty. For Proverbs 25:2, preserve the sequence: verse role (uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing” against “the honour of kings is to search out a matter”) -> contextual meaning in Proverbs 25:2–3 -> proportionate truth -> this accountable response.
Teach It Back
Explain Proverbs 25:2's exact role in Proverbs 25:2–3. Distinguish pattern from guarantee, include “It is the glory of God to conceal a...,” name one uncertainty, and explicitly reject one harmful use.
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Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 25:2–3 — Humility, teachability, pride, and reputation — It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour...Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
This sentence saying states a context-shaped moral pattern. Its small-cluster boundary and degree of generality remain reviewable; exceptional outcomes do not make the observation meaningless or turn it into a guarantee.
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 25:2–3, 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 25:2-25:3
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. 1161-1164, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 25:2–3
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 25:2–3 and the Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men 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 25:2–3
Open source ↗