Proverbs 14

Two builders and one house. The verse is about whether a person's daily choices are adding to their household or quietly dismantling it.

How a person walks is what their fear of God actually looks like. The verse makes conduct the evidence rather than the claim.

The fool's mouth carries a stick. The wise man's mouth carries a guard, and the verse compares what each one is armed with.

An empty barn is tidy. It is also empty, and the verse prefers the mess that comes with actual productivity.

Nearly a tautology, and deliberately so. The verse says a witness is defined by exactly one thing.

The scoffer looks and comes up empty. The verse is not about access; it is about what a person brings to the looking.

Leave. The verse gives permission to end a conversation that is not going anywhere, and it is one of the few pieces of straight tactical advice in the chapter.

Wisdom is knowing where you actually are. Folly, in this verse, is a lie the fool is telling, possibly to himself.

Treating wrongdoing as a joke is itself the diagnosis. The verse contrasts that with a community where things go well between people.

Some of what you carry cannot be transferred. The verse states the limits of being known, and it does not scold anyone for those limits.

A house against a tent, and the flimsier structure is the one still standing. The verse is comparing occupants, not architecture.

Being sure you are right is not evidence that you are. The verse names the one error a person cannot detect from inside it.

Laughing and hurting are not mutually exclusive. The verse says so plainly and assigns no blame to anyone doing both at once.

Each man ends up full of something. One is filled with the results of his own choices; the other receives what he could not generate.

Believing everything is not innocence, it is exposure. The prudent man's alternative is not suspicion but attention to where he is walking.

The wise man's caution moves him away from trouble. The fool's confidence keeps him in it, and the verse pairs his confidence with his temper.

Two different failures with two different costs. Hot temper produces foolish acts; cold scheming produces enemies.

Both men end up wearing something. One inherits a condition by default; the other is crowned with what he acquired.

The order eventually inverts. The verse describes a reversal without saying when it arrives.

An ugly fact, stated without approval. Poverty costs people their relationships, and the verse reports that rather than recommending it.

The behavior verse 20 described is now named as sin. The verse does not merely disapprove of contempt for the poor; it files it as wrongdoing.

Same verb, two directions. Both groups are planning something, and what they get is the character of what they planned.

Work produces something. Talking about work does not, and the verse draws the line exactly there.

The wise wear what they have gained. The second line refuses to dress the alternative up at all.

Telling the truth under oath saves people. The verse gives ordinary honesty a rescue function.

The book's central posture produces confidence rather than anxiety, which is the opposite of what "fear" suggests in English.

The same posture again, now described as a water source. What it does is practical: it routes a person around traps.

A ruler's standing is measured in people, not in possessions. Without them he has nothing to rule.

Patience is intelligence, not merely temperament. The verse treats a long fuse as evidence of a working mind.

What goes on inside shows up physically. The verse names envy specifically as the thing that eats a person from within.

Mistreat a poor person and the insult travels upward. The verse routes it to the Maker of both parties.

Two men at the end. One is driven out by what he did; the other has somewhere to go.

Wisdom sits quietly where it lives. Whatever is in a fool gets out, and the contrast is between what stays put and what escapes.

What lifts a nation is righteousness, and this book has already said what righteousness looks like in public: honest dealing and mercy to the poor.

Competence is noticed by the person it serves. The chapter ends on the ordinary workplace fact that good work earns goodwill.