Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Proverbs 29:23 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 23. 23A man’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “A man’s pride shall bring him low” against “honour shall uphold the humble in spirit”.
Anger recruits strife; pride recruits transgression; a thief's partner is a self-cursed witness
This verse is one part of that explanation in Proverbs 29:22–24. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.
Read It With
- Proverbs 29:22–24
Read Proverbs 29:23 with 29:22–24. Read alone, “A man’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the…” 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 “An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression”; by 29:24, it opens with “Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul” and develops the line through “he heareth cursing, and bewrayeth it not”. Together the unit concentrates on violence, predation, conflict, and protection, humility, teachability, pride, and reputation, truthful testimony, honest measures, and integrity within “Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men.”
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 29:22–24 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men.” Its lines concentrate on violence, predation, conflict, and protection, humility, teachability, pride, and reputation, truthful testimony, honest measures, and integrity, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “A man’s pride shall bring him low” against “honour shall uphold the humble in spirit”.
What Remains True
Teachability and truthful self-knowledge are safer than status-protection, self-exaltation, or contempt for correction. In Proverbs 29:23, that bounded truth is expressed through “A man’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the…,” 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. Proverbs 29:23 names that responsibility through “A man’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the…,” so the response must remain accountable to the person, action, comparison, or consequence in this line.
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 29:22–24 — Violence, predation, conflict, and protection — An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man…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 29:22–24, 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 29:22-29:24
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. 1175-1178, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 29:22–24
Open source ↗