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Proverbs 30:21–23, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 30:21–23
Observational wisdom drawn from creatures and ordinary life — For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four…
Four social inversions are said to make the earth tremble
For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four it cannot bear: for a servant when he reigns; and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married; and a handmaid who is heir to her mistress.
Disquieted earth is social earthquake-language. Servant reigning and handmaid inheriting the mistress are stock pictures of a household order suddenly flipped in that ancient structure. Fool filled with meat is a mocker who has finally gotten resources and no wisdom. Odious woman married is a person whose presence makes a house unlivable, not a woman you find inconvenient, not a wife asserting dignity, and not a license to call women odious.
Read the unrest as a warning about unformed power, not as a caste theology
The sayings come from a world of masters and servants. They are observational and hyperbolic. They do not teach that people born under another person's power must stay there, and they do not forbid just promotion, marriage, or inheritance. They notice what happens when appetite, folly, and spite get a throne, a table, a marriage, or an estate without becoming wise.
Cannot bear is how badly those rooms can go. The transferable fear is unformed people with sudden leverage, including you. Gendered and slave-economy images must not be used to keep women or workers small.
How this should shape us
Be afraid of folly that finally gets a full plate and of spite that finally gets a title. Do not use this list to argue that servants or women should stay under someone. If sudden power has come to you, get wisdom before the earth around you starts to shake.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 30:21–23 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: The unit's speaker, literary form, imagery, or arrangement carries named uncertainty. The judgment follows the received sequence without inventing a biography or forcing every image into one allegory.
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 30:21–23, 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 30:21-30:23
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1178-1181, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 30:21–23
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 30:21–23 and the Words of Agur and numbered observations outline
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 30:21–23, 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 30:21-30:23
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. 1178-1181, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 30:21–23
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 30:21–23 and the Words of Agur and numbered observations outline
Open source ↗