What Does Proverbs 10:22 Mean?
The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and he adds no pain with it.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.THE KEY
The Hebrew pairs increase with etzev, painful toil or sorrow, and says the LORD’s blessing makes rich without adding it.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s blessing brings increase without sorrow coming along with it. The verse draws attention to the character of that richness: it is not accompanied by the pain named in the Hebrew word for sorrow.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that every increase must carry grief or painful striving as its hidden price. It names a richness that comes with the LORD’s blessing and without sorrow added to it.
THE ROOT
בִּרְכַּת
birkat
GROWS FROM
ברך
b-r-k
To bless; the same consonants also form the word for knee.
English makes “blessing” sound like an abstract favor, while its Hebrew root also names the knee. That embodied echo adds a posture of bending or receiving to the increase this verse attributes to the LORD’s blessing.
ALSO GROWS
berakhah: blessing
בְּרָכָה
This is the noun in the verse’s phrase “the blessing of the LORD.”
berekh: knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared consonants bring the bodily image of the knee into the word for blessing.
barukh: blessed
בָּרוּךְ
This related form names one who receives or bears blessing, keeping the verse’s emphasis on blessing as the source of increase.
עֶצֶב
ʿetsev
GROWS FROM
עצב
ʿ-ts-b
Pain, grief, or toil.
The word translated “sorrow” can also name pain-filled labor. Its use here makes the contrast sharper: the blessing makes rich without that painful toil being added alongside it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿatsav: to grieve, hurt, or cause pain
עָצַב
The verb reveals the hurt and grief carried by the noun “sorrow.”
ʿitsavon: painful toil or pain
עִצָּבוֹן
This related noun uses the same root for pain and labor, widening the resonance of “sorrow” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Increase received as a gift from God is distinguished from gain pursued through painful, anxious toil.
But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to make strength, so that he may raise up his covenant, which he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.It is emptiness for you to rise up early and sit up late, to eat the bread of pains; for so he gives his beloved sleep.Every good giving and every complete gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no shifting and no shadow cast by turning.THE THREAD
It is emptiness for you to rise up early and sit up late, to eat the bread of pains; for so he gives his beloved sleep.“Sorrows” here translates the same Hebrew word, עֶצֶב (ʿetsev), that Proverbs says is not added with the LORD’s blessing. Psalm 127 sets that painful toil against what the LORD gives, revealing that Proverbs speaks about the source and character of increase, not simply its amount.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us