This verse closes the first movement of the interlude poem, Proverbs 3:13–20.
Quick answer
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.
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
Genesis ends its third chapter with the way to the tree of life barred; when Proverbs names wisdom a tree of life, the claim is quietly staggering: in a world east of Eden, the LORD has planted something whose fruit still nourishes, with branches hanging low enough to grasp. The verbs are grip words, "take hold," "retain," the footnote reads "hold her fast," because the tree feeds the one who keeps holding. Scripture will not let the image go: it returns at 11:30 and 13:12 and finally in Revelation 22, where the leaves heal the nations.
From this side of the cross
The tree of life is one of the Bible's longest arcs: barred in Genesis, glimpsed in Proverbs, opened in Revelation 22. Between the second and third stands another tree, the cross, by which the way back was opened for good.
Related: Genesis 2:9 · Proverbs 11:30 · Revelation 22:2
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.