Proverbs 3

A father asks his son to hold what he has been taught, not with a filing cabinet but with a heart: instruction kept the way you keep something you love.

Kept wisdom tends to lengthen life and deepen peace: the observed grain of the world, not a signed guarantee.

Mercy and truth, the covenant pair of loyal love and faithfulness, are to be worn like a necklace and written where nothing can erase them: on the heart.

The outcome of a life marked by mercy and truth: favor and a good name, before God and before people.

Put your full weight on the LORD, not on your own ability to figure life out. Trust here is not a feeling but a transfer of weight: what you lean on is what you are trusting.

Know the LORD in every part of your life, not just the religious parts, and He straightens the road ahead: a path cleared and made walkable, for the person whose whole life is lived before Him.

The negative image of verse 5: do not crown your own judgment. Being "wise in your own eyes" is the book's most hopeless condition; the cure is a right orientation toward the LORD.

Humble trust is good for the body: healing for the flesh, refreshment for the bones, a whole person doing better.

Honor the LORD with what you own, from the first of what comes in, not the leftovers. Firstfruits giving hands over the first portion before you know whether the rest of the harvest will come.

The outcome attached to firstfruits giving: full barns and overflowing vats. Covenant blessing language describing how generosity ordinarily fares under God's government, not a contract in which giving obligates God to multiply your money.

Do not write off the LORD's correction, and do not let it make you bitter. Chastening here is training language, a father shaping a son.

The LORD's correction flows from His love, the way a good father's correction flows from delight in his son. Discipline in this verse is proof of belonging, not evidence of rejection.

The person who finds wisdom is happy, blessed, deeply well off. The poem opens with a congratulation, not a command.

Wisdom out-earns precious metal. The verse talks like a merchant, proceeds, profits, gain, and reports that wisdom's returns beat silver and gold on their own terms.

Wisdom outranks not only silver and gold but rubies, and then the verse closes the auction entirely: nothing you could desire compares.

Wisdom is pictured with full hands: long life in her right, riches and honor in her left. What she was just valued above, she turns out to carry.

Wisdom's roads are good roads: the travel itself, not just the destination, is marked by pleasantness and peace.

Wisdom is a tree of life: take hold of her and something of Eden's vitality comes back within reach. The poem closes where it opened, with happiness.

The wisdom just offered to the reader is the wisdom by which the LORD built the world.

God's knowledge runs the waters: the deep springs that broke open and the dew that settles overnight. Creation's largest convulsions and its smallest kindnesses, one wisdom.

Keep sound wisdom and discretion where you can see them: sustained attention, because what leaves the eyes soon leaves the life.

Kept wisdom becomes life on the inside and grace on the outside: vitality for the soul, and the adornment a well-lived life wears in public.

The person who keeps wisdom in view walks a safer road: a traveler whose footing holds through ordinary days.

Wisdom's security follows you to bed: the person whose life is ordered by sound wisdom lies down without dread, because the day behind them holds no ambushes waiting to spring.

Do not live braced for catastrophe. Sudden terror and the trouble the wicked cause are real, the verse says "when it comes," not "if", but the wise are not required to fear them in advance.

The reason the wise can walk safely and sleep unafraid: the LORD Himself is their confidence. The security of vv. 21–25 was never self-assurance.

If good is owed and your hand can deliver it, deliver it. The quietest form of wrongdoing is not doing harm, just not doing the good that was yours to do.

Do not make a neighbor come back tomorrow for what you could hand over today. Delay dressed up as scheduling is still withholding.

Do not plot against the neighbor who lives beside you trusting that beside you is a safe place to live. The verse forbids treachery: harm devised against someone whose guard is down because of you.

Do not pick fights. Conflict with a man who has done you no harm is conflict manufactured.

Do not envy the man who wins by force, and do not imitate him. The command takes aim at the moment violence starts to look like a strategy because it appears to be working.

The reason not to envy the oppressor: the LORD finds the crooked man abhorrent, while the upright are brought inside His confidence. One man has winnings; the other has the friendship of God.

The LORD's stance reaches the household: His curse rests on the house built by wickedness, His blessing on the home of the just. Trajectories under God's government, not luck.

The LORD answers scorn with scorn and meets humility with grace. Whoever mocks his way through life finds God unimpressed; whoever comes low finds Him generous.

Two estates are being written: the wise inherit glory, honor that comes as a bequest, while shame is what fools leave and receive.