This verse states the purpose of the whole collection it introduces, Proverbs 22:17–24:22.
Quick answer
Here is why the collection exists: "so that your trust may be in the LORD." Not information, formation; not merely smarter, but trusting Him. And the address is personal: today, even you.
Read the whole unit
At 22:17 the book changes voice. Solomon's one-line sayings give way to a new collection, the Sayings of the Wise (22:17–24:22), and it opens the way the father's lectures opened: incline your ear, apply your heart. The five-verse prologue names its goal with unusual directness, and the goal is not information: "so that your trust may be in the LORD" (v. 19). Everything that follows, warnings about the poor, anger, surety, landmarks, and tables, serves that single stated purpose.
One honest note belongs here, once. Verse 20 in the NKJV reads "excellent things"; many modern translations read "thirty sayings," reflecting a different understanding of a difficult Hebrew word, and scholars have long noticed that this collection resembles a numbered anthology, with an Egyptian parallel (the Instruction of Amenemope) often discussed alongside it. The exact division into thirty is disputed, and nothing in the teaching depends on settling it. This catalog follows common English-edition divisions, and no entry in the collection relitigates the question; this paragraph is its one home.
What this verse contributes
This verse is the prologue's center and the collection's mission statement. Every practical saying ahead, money, anger, tables, boundaries, serves a stated end that is not practical but relational: trust in the LORD, the same destination the whole book has taught since 3:5. Wisdom literature never separates skill for living from dependence on the Giver of life; sayings that made a man merely shrewd would have failed their own purpose. The second line's "even you" leans across the desk: this instruction was issued to a person, today, not to posterity in general. The reader is not overhearing someone else's education.
Related: Proverbs 3:5–6 · Psalm 78:5–7
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.