What Does Proverbs 14:20 Mean?
The emptied one is hated even by his neighbor, but many are the ones who love the rich.
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 poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends.THE KEY
Hebrew uses the same word for “neighbor” and “friends”: poverty meets hatred where wealth gathers companions.
THE MEANING
This verse names a reality that still meets you: poverty can turn even a nearby person against you, while wealth draws a crowd. Beneath “neighbor” and “friends” is the same word for companion, held in two sharply different responses.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that many companions prove a person is loved: the verse shows that wealth can gather a crowd while poverty meets rejection even close to home.
THE ROOT
רֵעֵהוּ
rēʿēhû
GROWS FROM
רעה
r-ʿ-h
To tend or pasture; by extension, to associate with or be a companion.
“neighbor / friends” in this verse is rēʿēhû. The words rendered “neighbor” and “friends” are forms of the same Hebrew word, רֵעַ (rēaʿ), meaning companion or neighbor. The verse holds that shared relationship in a stark contrast: poverty meets hatred from a companion, while wealth gathers many companions.
ALSO GROWS
rēaʿ: Companion, friend, or neighbor.
רֵעַ
This is the singular word behind both the poor person’s “neighbor” and the rich person’s “friends.”
rōʿeh: Shepherd; one who tends a flock.
רֹעֶה
This branch carries the root’s sense of tending and association, a striking echo beneath a word for companion.
THE PATTERN
People often gather around wealth and withdraw from poverty, so social regard follows status rather than the person.
Wealth adds many companions, but the emptied one is parted from his neighbor.And there is found in it a poor wise man, and he slips the city free by his wisdom; yet no one remembers that same poor man.And you look upon the one who wears shining clothing, and say to him, Sit here well; and say to the emptied one, Stand there, or sit here beneath my footstool.THE THREAD
Wealth adds many companions, but the emptied one is parted from his neighbor.The same Hebrew word for companion appears as “friends” and “neighbour” in both verses. Proverbs 19:4 makes explicit the reversal compressed here: wealth gathers companions, while poverty leaves a person separated from them.
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