This verse sits inside the father's lecture on trusting the LORD, Proverbs 3:1–12.
Quick answer
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.
Read the whole unit
The father's lecture on trusting the LORD is built with unusual symmetry: six pairs of verses, each an instruction followed by its outcome. Keep the teaching, and find long life (vv. 1–2). Bind mercy and truth to yourself, and find favor (vv. 3–4). Trust the LORD, and find straight paths (vv. 5–6). Fear the LORD instead of trusting yourself, and find health (vv. 7–8). Honor the LORD with your possessions, and find full barns (vv. 9–10). And then the pair nobody frames for the wall: do not despise the LORD's discipline, because it is the treatment sons receive from a Father who delights in them (vv. 11–12). That last pair is not an afterthought; it is the lecture's safety rail. Five pairs of blessing language could curdle into a formula, as if trust and generosity were coins for a vending machine. The sixth pair breaks the machine: the life of trust includes correction, and correction is not the system failing you. It is the Father loving you. The whole lecture describes how life tends to go inside a relationship with the LORD; it observes the grain of the world under God's active government. It does not sign contracts, and it never asks the reader to earn what the relationship already holds.
What this verse contributes
This verse walks the lecture's trust into the barn. Firstfruits made generosity an act of faith rather than a tip left after a good meal: giving first says the harvest belonged to the LORD all along; giving last says He may have what I can spare. The verse asks where wealth ranks in the heart's order, and assumes what the whole lecture assumes: the LORD who holds your path (v. 6) also holds your economy.
Related: Deuteronomy 26:1–11 · 2 Corinthians 9:7
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.