What Does Proverbs 22:2 Mean?
The rich and the poor meet; the LORD makes them all.
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 rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all.THE KEY
Rich and poor are not two kinds of humanity; they meet within the one making of the LORD.
THE MEANING
Having wealth or lacking it does not give you a different maker. Both stand within the LORD’s making, even while their circumstances differ.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that wealth makes someone more fully human, or poverty makes someone less, is undone: both belong to the same making.
THE ROOT
עֹשֵׂה
ʿoseh
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿayin
Do, make, act.
The verse names the LORD as the one who makes. Since rich and poor are both within that same making, rank does not make them different kinds of humanity.
ALSO GROWS
maʿaseh: Work, deed, or act.
מַעֲשֶׂה
The maker and the work share a root, placing both people within the same act of making.
ʿasui: Made or done.
עָשׂוּי
This form names what has been made; neither wealth nor poverty changes the fact of being made.
THE PATTERN
Differences in status do not divide people into separate origins: the same maker holds them together.
Did not he who made me in the belly make him? Did not one set us firm in the womb?And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.The poor and the deceitful man meet together, and the LORD lights the eyes of both.THE THREAD
Did not he who made me in the belly make him? Did not one set us firm in the womb?The verse repeats the same making verb for both people, then says one maker fashioned them. That shared making gives Proverbs’ rich and poor a common ground deeper than their circumstances.
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