The chapter that opens by ranking a good name above great riches spends the rest of its length showing exactly how a name like that actually gets built — child by child, coin by coin, landmark by landmark.
A study in Proverbs 22 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 16 min read
A Good Name Is Rather To Be Chosen Than Great Riches
“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold. The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all.”
Proverbs 22:1-2
“Rather to be chosen” frames a good name as an actual decision, not a lucky accident of birth or circumstance — something built by choice, the same way silver and gold are usually built, only pointed at a different target.
“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished. By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life.”
Proverbs 22:3-4
“Pass on” describes the simple man’s mistake with unusual gentleness — not defiance, not even foolishness exactly, just failing to stop and notice a danger the prudent man saw coming from some distance off.
Train Up A Child In The Way He Should Go
“Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that doth keep his soul shall be far from them. Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:5-6
“Solomon says: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ This language is positive. The training which Solomon enjoins is to direct, educate, and develop. In order for parents and teachers to do this work, they must themselves understand ‘the way’ the child should go.”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 3, p. 131
“This language is positive,” White insists — not a hopeful suggestion that might or might not pan out, but a definite promise, provided the training itself is real direction and development rather than mere restraint.
“The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
Proverbs 22:7
“How many a man might have escaped financial failure and ruin by heeding the warnings, so often repeated and emphasized in the Scriptures…‘The borrower is servant to the lender.’”
Ellen G. White · Education, p. 136
This is the same financial-ethics page already quoted twice in this series, back in the Proverbs 13 and Proverbs 21 studies — a third verse now pulled from the same single-page chain of nearly a dozen Solomon quotes White strung together on debt, haste, and dishonest gain.
He That Hath A Bountiful Eye Shall Be Blessed
“He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail. He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor.”
Proverbs 22:8-9
“A bountiful eye” locates generosity first in how a man looks at need before it ever reaches his hand — the giving described here as the natural outflow of a particular way of seeing other people, not a separate decision made afterward.
“Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease. He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend.”
Proverbs 22:10-11
“Contention shall go out” treats a scorner almost like a single contaminant in an otherwise healthy body — remove that one person, and the surrounding strife and reproach are said to leave with him, not because everyone else became peaceful, but because the source is gone.
“The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the words of the transgressor. The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.”
Proverbs 22:12-13
The imaginary lion is this book’s most transparent excuse yet — an entirely invented danger, conjured for the sole purpose of justifying a man’s refusal to leave the house and do his work.
The Mouth Of Strange Women Is A Deep Pit
“The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein.”
Proverbs 22:14
“Abhorred of the LORD” makes falling into this particular pit less an accident of temptation than a kind of judgment already in motion — the trap is real, but it is the man already given over who is named as the one who falls into it.
“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”
Proverbs 22:15
“Many Christian parents fail to command their children after them, and then wonder that their children are perverse, disobedient, unthankful, and unholy…They have failed to teach them the first lesson of Christianity: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ ‘Foolishness,’ says the wise man, ‘is bound in the heart of a child.’”
Ellen G. White · Child Guidance, p. 87
White reads “bound in the heart” as a plain diagnosis every parent should already expect, not a symptom of some unusual failure — the surprise, in her reading, is parents who wonder at a child’s foolishness they were told from the start to plan for.
“He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.”
Proverbs 22:16
Two opposite-looking transactions — squeezing a poor man and flattering a rich one — are handed the identical sentence, as if the underlying motive behind both is simply favor-currying wherever it seems most likely to pay off.
Bow Down Thine Ear, And Hear The Words Of The Wise
“Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips.”
Proverbs 22:17-18
“Fitted in thy lips” describes wisdom becoming so much a part of a person that it comes out naturally in speech — not memorized lines recited on cue, but words shaped by something already kept and settled within.
“That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee. Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge,”
Proverbs 22:19-20
“Even to thee” is a small, personal emphasis in the middle of a general book of wisdom — Solomon briefly steps out of the third-person proverb form to address one specific reader directly, as if he wants no one to assume these words are meant for someone else.
“That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?”
Proverbs 22:21
“Answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee” states the whole purpose of this instruction plainly — not private knowledge to be kept, but preparation for a moment when someone else’s question will need a true answer from exactly this reader.
Rob Not The Poor, Because He Is Poor
“Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: for the LORD will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.”
Proverbs 22:22-23
“Because he is poor” states the tempting logic outright before condemning it — poverty itself functioning, in a wicked man’s calculation, as the very reason he seems safe to rob, precisely because no one expects the poor to have the means to fight back.
“Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.”
Proverbs 22:24-25
“Lest thou learn his ways” names the actual risk of bad company plainly — not that an angry man will directly harm his friend, but that simple, ordinary proximity is often enough to reproduce his temper in someone who never meant to catch it.
“Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee? Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”
Proverbs 22:26-28
“Which thy fathers have set” grounds this warning in inheritance rather than mere property law — a landmark is not simply a boundary line, it is a fact handed down, and moving it quietly rewrites a piece of the past along with the present.
Seest Thou A Man Diligent In His Business
“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.”
Proverbs 22:29
“‘Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.’ ‘He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.’”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 178
The same page already quoted for its second verse back in the Proverbs 10 study — there, White applied the pairing to a specific man in her own congregation who let his wife carry every burden; the chapter’s very last verse turns out to be the half of that quote saved for here.
