Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Proverbs 28:21 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 21. 21To have respect of persons is not good: for for a piece of bread that man will transgress.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse opens with “To have respect of persons is not good” and develops the line through “for for a piece of bread that man will transgress”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 28:20–23
Follow Proverbs 28:20–23, not verse 28:21 alone. This line opens with “To have respect of persons is not good” and develops the line through “for for a piece of bread that man will transgress”, while the complete unit distinguishes a normal moral direction from a guaranteed outcome.
Why This Verse Appears Here
This verse opens with “To have respect of persons is not good” and develops the line through “for for a piece of bread that man will transgress”. This contributes necessary evidence to “Wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power — A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that...,” where wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power, justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation, speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence are read together without erasing the sentence saying's own force.
Follow the Context
- Opening (28:20): the unit uses contrastive parallelism to place “A faithful man shall abound with blessings” against “he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent”.
- Development (28:20–23): adjacent lines test wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power, justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation, speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence through parallelism, contrast, motive, image, or consequence.
- Close (28:23): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “He that rebuketh a man afterwards shall find more favour than he that flattereth with the tongue”, creating the next supported pause.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“To have respect of persons is not good: for for a piece of...”
In plain language: justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation
This verse opens with “To have respect of persons is not good” and develops the line through “for for a piece of bread that man will transgress”.
Why it matters: This wording carries interpretive, pastoral, or misuse risk requiring the full unit and explicit limits.
How certain? probableWhat This Verse Is Not Saying
The verse does not blame food insecurity, demean hungry people, excuse bribery by the well-fed, or deny the material pressures that distort judgment.
What Remains True
Wisdom requires honest judgment and active regard for people who can be exploited, ignored, or misrepresented. In Proverbs 28:21, that bounded truth is expressed through “To have respect of persons is not good: for for a piece of...,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Use verifiable evidence, fair procedure, proportionate response, and meaningful access for the person with less power. For Proverbs 28:21, preserve the sequence: verse role (opens with “To have respect of persons is not good” and develops the line through “for for a piece of bread that man will transgress”) -> contextual meaning in Proverbs 28:20–23 -> proportionate truth -> this accountable response.
Teach It Back
Explain Proverbs 28:21's exact role in Proverbs 28:20–23. Distinguish pattern from guarantee, include “To have respect of persons is not good:...,” 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 28:20–23 — Wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power — A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that...Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
The bread image warns how cheaply partial judgment can be purchased; it is not a claim that hungry people are uniquely corrupt.
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 28:20–23, 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 28:20-28:23
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. 1171-1175, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 28:20–23
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 28:20–23 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 28:20–23
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
The situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth in the Book of Proverbs
G. H. Wittenberg
Scriptura 21, 1987; open archive 2020
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Exact location: Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 28:20–23
Open source ↗