Proverbs Devotionals
One for each chapter. Want to test what you read? Take the Proverbs quizzes.
- Proverbs 1: Where Knowledge Begins
Proverbs states its purpose at the outset: wisdom, discipline, and insight for right living, offered to the simple and the young, and to the wise who still want to grow (1:2-5).…
- Proverbs 2: Searching for a Gift
Proverbs 2 piles up words of effort. Accept these teachings, store them up, turn your ear toward wisdom, call out for insight, and search for it the way someone would dig for…
- Proverbs 3: Trust Beyond Our Own Insight
Proverbs 3 holds one of the best-loved calls in the Bible. Trust the LORD with your whole heart instead of relying on your own insight, acknowledge him in everything, and he will…
- Proverbs 4: A Heart Worth Guarding
Proverbs 4 begins with a father remembering his own father. When he was young, his father taught him to hold tightly to wisdom, and now he hands those same words to his sons…
- Proverbs 5: Delight Kept Close to Home
This chapter is frank about a temptation that can ruin a life. The forbidden woman's words are sweet and smooth, but in the end they turn bitter and sharp, and her path leads down…
- Proverbs 6: What the LORD Hates
Proverbs 6 moves quickly: get free from a rash pledge, learn from the ant that works with no one standing over it (6:6-8), and beware the troublemaker. Then it pauses on a list of…
- Proverbs 7: The Slow Walk Toward Ruin
Proverbs 7 tells its warning as a story. From his window, the father watches a young man who lacks judgment wander near the adulteress's corner as daylight fades into night…
- Proverbs 8: Wisdom Beside the Creator
In Proverbs 8, Wisdom speaks for herself. She stands where roads meet, calling to everyone and offering instruction worth more than silver and gold (8:1-11). Then she tells where…
- Proverbs 9: An Invitation to Wisdom's Table
Proverbs 9 sets two meals side by side. Wisdom has built her house, prepared meat and wine, set her table, and sent her servants to invite the simple to come and eat (9:1-5). Her…
- Proverbs 10: Blessing Without Added Sorrow
With chapter 10 the book shifts from long speeches to short, two-line sayings, most of them setting the righteous beside the wicked. The LORD does not let the righteous starve…
- Proverbs 11: Honest Weights and Open Hands
Proverbs 11 opens in the marketplace. Rigged scales disgust the LORD, but a true weight pleases him (11:1). Before any word about worship, the chapter shows God watching a…
- Proverbs 12: Words That Pierce or Heal
Again and again, Proverbs 12 returns to the mouth. Reckless words wound like the thrust of a sword, but the speech of the wise brings healing (12:18). Truth lasts, while a lie is…
- Proverbs 13: When Hope Is Delayed
One of the most honest sayings in the book sits in this chapter. When hope keeps getting put off, the heart grows sick, but a longing fulfilled is like a tree of life (13:12).…
- Proverbs 14: A Way That Only Seems Right
Some roads look right from the start. Proverbs 14 warns that a path can seem straight to a person and still end in death (14:12), and the saying appears again in 16:25, as though…
- Proverbs 15: Seen and Heard by the LORD
Proverbs 15 keeps reminding the reader that God is watching and listening. The LORD's eyes are everywhere, taking note of both evil and good (15:3). Even the realm of the dead…
- Proverbs 16: Plans in Higher Hands
Two truths sit side by side in this chapter. People make plans, and they should. The chapter urges them to hand their work over to the LORD (16:3). Yet it keeps pointing past…
- Proverbs 17: Covering an Offense
Peace matters more than plenty in this chapter. A plain meal in a quiet house beats a lavish feast served with strife (17:1). Starting a quarrel is like opening a dam, so the wise…
- Proverbs 18: A Tower Stronger Than Wealth
Proverbs 18 places two fortresses side by side. The LORD's name is a high place of safety, and the righteous run to it and are protected (18:10). In the very next verse, a rich…
- Proverbs 19: Lending to the LORD
The poor are easy to abandon, and Proverbs 19 notices it. Wealth draws many friends, while a poor man is shunned by his brothers, and his pleading goes unanswered (19:4, 19:7).…
- Proverbs 20: A Lamp That Searches Within
A question sits in the middle of Proverbs 20 that no one can answer well. Who can honestly claim to have kept his heart pure and to be clean of his sin (20:9)? The honest answer…
- Proverbs 21: Kings in the LORD's Hand
A king's heart, this chapter begins, is like a channel of water that the LORD directs wherever he chooses (21:1). Even a ruler's decisions flow where God sends them. No throne…
- Proverbs 22: Trust Is the Goal
Proverbs 22 includes the familiar saying about training a child in the right way so that he keeps to it even in old age (22:6). It is easy to take that as a guarantee and then…
- Proverbs 23: Wealth That Flies Away
Money pulls hard, and Proverbs 23 is realistic about it. Do not exhaust yourself trying to get rich, it says, because wealth can vanish in the blink of an eye, as if it grew wings…
- Proverbs 24: Rising After the Fall
The righteous fall too, and Proverbs 24 is honest about it. A righteous person may go down again and again and still get back up, while the wicked stumble when hard times come and…
- Proverbs 25: Bread for an Enemy
Few commands in Proverbs run harder against instinct than this one. When an enemy is hungry or thirsty, the saying tells you to provide him a meal and a drink (25:21). Doing so,…
- Proverbs 26: Wise in Our Own Eyes
Proverbs 26 places two sayings next to each other that seem to contradict. One warns against answering a fool on his own terms, lest you become like him (26:4). The next urges…
- Proverbs 27: The Faithful Wounds of a Friend
Friends get a great deal of attention in Proverbs 27. An open rebuke is better than love kept hidden, and a friend's painful honesty is more faithful than an enemy's show of…
- Proverbs 28: Mercy for the Confessing
There are two ways of handling sin, and Proverbs 28 sets them side by side. Covering it up leads nowhere good, but the one who admits it and leaves it behind receives mercy…
- Proverbs 29: Freed from the Fear of People
Near its end, Proverbs 29 names a trap many people walk into without noticing. Being afraid of people sets a snare, while trusting the LORD lifts a person to safety (29:25). That…
- Proverbs 30: Humbled Before the Holy One
Agur begins not with confidence but with exhaustion. He is weary, he says, and he admits that he lacks understanding and has not learned wisdom or knowledge of the Holy One…
- Proverbs 31: The Fear That Outlasts Beauty
Proverbs ends with a mother's counsel and a poem of praise. King Lemuel's mother urges her son to use his power to speak up for those who have no voice and defend the poor…