If you are wise, you are wise to your own advantage; but if you scoff, you alone will bear the consequences.
Parallel translations
- WEB If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you mock, you alone will bear it.
- KJV If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.
- NKJV If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, And if you scoff, you will bear it alone.”
- NASB If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, And if you scoff, you alone will suffer from it.
- NLT If you become wise, you will be the one to benefit. If you scorn wisdom, you will be the one to suffer.
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
If you are wise, you benefit yourself; if you mock, you alone bear the consequences. Each person reaps the fruit of his own choices.
Overview
This verse stresses personal responsibility: the rewards of wisdom and the penalties of scorn fall chiefly on the one who chooses them. It does not deny that our choices affect others, but it underscores that no one can escape the consequences of his own heart. Scripture affirms this principle of reaping what we sow (Galatians 6:7).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Job 22:2–3“Can a man be of use to God? Can even a wise man benefit Him?
- 2 Pet 3:3–4Most importantly, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.
- Ezek 18:20The soul who sins is the one who will die. A son will not bear the iniquity of his father, and a father will not bear the iniquity of his son. The righteousness of the righteous man will fall upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked man will fall upon him.
- Job 22:21Reconcile now and be at peace with Him; thereby good will come to you.
- Prov 16:26A worker’s appetite works for him because his hunger drives him onward.
- Job 35:6–7If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? If you multiply your transgressions, what do you do to Him?
- 2 Pet 3:16He writes this way in all his letters, speaking in them about such matters. Some parts of his letters are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
- Isa 28:22So now, do not mock, or your shackles will become heavier. Indeed, I have heard from the Lord GOD of Hosts a decree of destruction against the whole land.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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 9:12 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
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.