Proverbs 22:4-6
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
4 The result of humility and fear of the Lord
is riches, honor and life.[a]
5 Thorns and snares are on the path of the crooked;
those who would safeguard their lives will avoid them.
6 Train the young in the way they should go;
even when old, they will not swerve from it.[b]
Footnotes
- 22:4 Humiliation can be an occasion for knowing one’s place in God’s world. Such knowledge is part of fear (or revering) of the Lord. Revering the Lord brings the blessings of wealth, honor, and long life. The saying is perhaps meant to counter the view that humiliation is an unmixed evil; something good can come of it.
- 22:6 One of the few exhortations in the collection (cf. 14:7; 16:3; 19:18, 20). “Way” in the first colon has been taken in two different senses: (1) the morally right way, “according to the way one ought to go”; (2) personal aptitude, i.e., the manner of life for which one is destined, as “the way of Egypt” (Is 10:24). Neither interpretation, however, accounts for the pronoun in the Hebrew phrase, lit., “his own way.” The most natural solution is to take the whole as ironic advice (like 19:27): yes, go ahead and let the young do exactly what they want; they will become self-willed adults.
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