The chapter's famous-verse entry, and one of the most quoted proverbs in prosperity teaching.
Quick answer
The verse credits material provision to the LORD's blessing rather than human striving alone. Depending on how the second line is translated, His blessing either comes without sorrow attached or cannot be improved by anxious toil. It does not promise wealth to every faithful person, and it does not diagnose the unwealthy as unblessed.
Read both lines
Start with what the first line is doing in its own chapter. Verses 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, and 16 have already circled wealth and work: diligence tends to enrich, slackness impoverishes, wealth fortifies, wicked treasure fails. Into that run of observations about how riches are gotten, verse 22 drops a vertical line: behind every having worth having stands the blessing of the LORD. The diligent hand of 10:4 is real, and this verse does not cancel it; it stands over it. The hand works the field, but the field, the rain, the strength in the hand, and the years to enjoy the harvest are all issued from somewhere the hand cannot reach.
The second line carries the proverb's real weight: "He adds no sorrow with it." The sages had seen the other kind of riches up close, and so have you. Wealth clawed together by fraud, overwork, or trampling people arrives with sorrow already attached: the fear of exposure, the ruined relationships, the acid of always defending what was wrongly gotten, the appetite that grows with the feeding. Proverbs itself catalogs these invoices: wealth hastily gotten dwindles (13:11), the greedy man troubles his own house (15:27), bread of deceit turns to gravel in the mouth (20:17). What God gives does not bill you later. That is the contrast: not blessed rich versus ordinary rich, but wealth with no hidden cost versus wealth that was all cost from the start.
Psalm 127:1–2 is this verse stretched into a whole poem: unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain; He gives His beloved sleep.
Why translations differ
The second line can also be read "and toil adds nothing to it," and the Hebrew genuinely permits either. The NKJV's reading contrasts God's giving with sorrow-financed wealth; the alternative contrasts God's giving with human striving. Both arrows point the same direction: the decisive variable in a blessed life is the goodness of the Giver, not the grinding of the hands.
What it does not mean
This verse may be the most quoted proverb in prosperity teaching, where it becomes a mechanism: activate the blessing by faith, sowing, or declaration, and wealth follows. Read that way, the verse turns God's kindness into a technique, and it quietly indicts every faithful believer of modest means as unblessed.
The correction, though, must not overcorrect. "Rich" here really does mean material provision; the verse says plainly that wealth can be a genuine gift of God, and there is no need to spiritualize it away. What the verse never says is that every faithful person will become wealthy, or that money is the universal evidence of blessing. The book itself blocks both: it prays against riches and poverty in the same breath (30:8–9), insists that a little with the fear of the LORD outweighs great treasure with trouble (15:16, 16:8), and knows that some wealth signals nothing about God's favor at all (10:2, 11:4).
This is gift wisdom, not a wealth mechanism. The verse observes where good gifts come from; it does not teach a technique for extracting them.
From this side of the cross
What God gives in Christ, righteousness, sonship, peace, is given whole, with no invoice attached. Everything self-salvation ever builds comes with the sorrow built in: the anxiety of maintaining it, the fear of losing it, the exhaustion of the upkeep. What God gives, He gives the way this verse says He gives: fully, freely, and without the bill.
Related: Proverbs 15:16 · Proverbs 30:8–9 · Psalm 127:1–2
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.