This verse sits inside the interlude poem, Proverbs 3:13–20.
Quick answer
Wisdom outranks not only silver and gold but rubies, and then the verse closes the auction entirely: nothing you could desire compares.
Read the whole unit
Between the chapter's two lectures, it pauses to sing. This eight-verse interlude is a poem in two movements. The first (vv. 13–18) is framed by happiness: it opens "Happy is the man who finds wisdom" and closes "happy are all who retain her," and between those bookends it prices wisdom against everything an ancient reader valued, silver, gold, rubies, long life, riches, honor, and finds the market unable to match her. The closing image reaches all the way back to Eden: she is "a tree of life to those who take hold of her." The second movement (vv. 19–20) changes the register entirely: the same wisdom the son is urged to find is the wisdom by which the LORD founded the earth and established the heavens. That is the poem's quiet astonishment. The thing being offered to an ordinary young man is the very principle by which the world was made. Wisdom is not a study aid; she is woven into the architecture of reality, which is exactly why living against her is living against the grain of everything.
What this verse contributes
This verse finishes the valuation with a totality: the second line stops naming rivals and dismisses the whole category. The same verdict is passed on wisdom at 8:11 and echoed of the virtuous wife at 31:10; it is this book's highest price tag. The verse leaves an honest question rather than a guilt trip: something currently holds the top of your desires. Is it worth more than the skill of living well before God?
Related: Proverbs 8:11 · Philippians 3:8
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.