If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, And if you scoff, you will bear it alone.”
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.
- BSB If you are wise, you are wise to your own advantage; but if you scoff, you alone will bear the consequences.
- 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 profitable to God? Surely he who is wise is profitable to himself.
- 2 Pet 3:3–4knowing this first, that in the last days mockers will come, walking after their own lusts,
- Ezek 18:20The soul who sins, he shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be on him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be on him.
- Job 22:21“Acquaint yourself with him, now, and be at peace. Thereby good shall come to you.
- Prov 16:26The appetite of the laboring man labors for him; for his mouth urges him on.
- Job 35:6–7If you have sinned, what effect do you have against him? If your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him?
- 2 Pet 3:16as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
- Isa 28:22Now therefore don’t be scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord, Yahweh of Armies, on the whole earth.
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.