The wages of the righteous is life, The income of the wicked, punishment.
Parallel translations
- WEB The labor of the righteous leads to life. The increase of the wicked leads to sin.
- KJV The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the wicked to sin.
- BSB The labor of the righteous leads to life, but the gain of the wicked brings punishment.
- NKJV The labor of the righteous leads to life, The wages of the wicked to sin.
- NLT The earnings of the godly enhance their lives, but evil people squander their money on sin.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The wage of the righteous leads to life, but the gain of the wicked to sin. Righteous earnings bear good fruit; wicked gain leads to more evil.
Overview
The fruit of one's labor is shaped by one's character: the righteous use their gain toward life, while the wicked turn theirs toward sin. It is not wealth itself but the heart behind it that determines its outcome. This points to the deeper truth that genuine life comes from righteousness, fulfilled in Christ our righteousness (Romans 6:23).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Isa 3:10–11Tell the righteous “Good!” For they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
- Rom 6:23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Heb 6:10For God is not unrighteous, so as to forget your work and the labor of love which you showed toward his name, in that you served the saints, and still do serve them.
- John 6:27Don’t work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For God the Father has sealed him.”
- Prov 11:18–19Wicked people earn deceitful wages, but one who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.
- 1 Cor 15:58Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
- Matt 12:33–34“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good, or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by its fruit.
- Matt 7:17–18Even so, every good tree produces good fruit; but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit.
- Prov 11:30The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. He who is wise wins souls.
- Gal 6:7–9Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
- Matt 15:19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.
- 2 Tim 3:13But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
- 2 Tim 2:17–18and those words will consume like gangrene, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;
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Christ at the center
Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.
How Proverbs 10:16 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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