What Does Proverbs 23:24 Mean?

This verse sits inside the saying in Proverbs 23:22–25.

Quick answer

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The saying opened with parents to be heard and not despised, put truth at the center, and now closes its frame: the father rejoicing (v. 24) and the mother glad (v. 25) over the child who bought what they were selling all those years.

Read the whole unit

A four-verse saying about honoring the people who formed you and the truth they handed you. It opens with a command spanning a lifetime, listen to the father who begot you, do not despise your mother when she is old (v. 22), sets its famous centerpiece, buy the truth and do not sell it (v. 23), and closes with the payoff seen from the parents' side: the father of the righteous greatly rejoices; let the mother who bore you be glad (vv. 24–25). The structure is a frame: parents at the beginning, parents at the end, and truth in the middle, because in this saying the two are one subject. The truth a son was taught and the parents who taught it are honored or despised together, and a child's wisdom is the one gift that reaches a parent's old age.

What this verse contributes

This verse contributes the payoff seen from the father's side, and it doubles the joy words: greatly rejoice, delight. It restates the chapter's earlier confession (23:15–16) as a general truth, and together with 10:1 it brackets the son's choices inside a family's emotional life. The verse also quietly completes the logic of verse 22: the father you are asked to keep hearing is not a functionary; he is a man whose gladness rides on how you turn out.

Related: Proverbs 23:15–16 · Proverbs 10:1 · Proverbs 29:3

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