A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty awaits him.
Parallel translations
- WEB A stingy man hurries after riches, and doesn’t know that poverty waits for him.
- KJV He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.
- NKJV A man with an evil eye hastens after riches, And does not consider that poverty will come upon him.
- NASB A person with an evil eye hurries after wealth And does not know that poverty will come upon him.
- NLT Greedy people try to get rich quick but don’t realize they’re headed for poverty.
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 greedy rush after wealth, unaware that poverty is coming for them. It warns that miserly, hasty pursuit of riches ends in loss.
Overview
The stingy person eagerly chases riches while blind to the poverty that awaits as the fruit of his greed. The verse exposes the self-defeating nature of covetous haste. Jesus warns that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions and that storing up earthly treasure while neglecting God is folly (Luke 12:15).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- 1 Tim 6:9Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.
- Prov 23:6Do not eat the bread of a stingy man, and do not crave his delicacies;
- Prov 28:20A faithful man will abound with blessings, but one eager to be rich will not go unpunished.
- Job 27:16–17Though he heaps up silver like dust and piles up a wardrobe like clay,
- Matt 20:15Do I not have the right to do as I please with what is mine? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
- Mark 7:22greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.
- Job 20:18–22He must return the fruit of his labor without consuming it; he cannot enjoy the profits of his trading.
- Gen 19:17As soon as the men had brought them out, one of them said, “Run for your lives! Do not look back, and do not stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away!”
- Gen 13:10–13And Lot looked out and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan, all the way to Zoar, was well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)
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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 28:22 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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