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Proverbs 16:11 · World English Bible

Proverbs 16:11 Meaning Honest Balances and Scales Are Yahweh’s

Honest balances and scales are Yahweh’s; all the weights in the bag are his work.

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What does Proverbs 16:11 mean?

The ego keeps its own crooked scale, weighing every brother against the mind's hidden guilt and always finding him wanting. It calls this measuring fairness, but the balance was rigged from the start, tipped by the need to see attack so the mind can feel justified.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 16:11 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The ego keeps its own crooked scale, weighing every brother against the mind's hidden guilt and always finding him wanting. It calls this measuring fairness, but the balance was rigged from the start, tipped by the need to see attack so the mind can feel justified. No verdict from that scale can be trusted, because the hand on it is afraid.

The only true measure belongs to love, which weighs no one and finds all equally innocent. Every honest standard a mind can hold was set there by that gentler Source, not invented by the ego to convict. A mind judges rightly only when it hands the scale back to the One who sees no guilt to weigh.

Weight and balance: the standard by which a mind measures others, honest only when love and not guilt sets the scale. Bag: the hidden store of a mind's judgments, the private collection of measures it carries to weigh each brother.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 16:11 today

  1. Catch the quick verdict you make about a stranger today, in line or on the road, and set it down without finishing it.
  2. With someone you have already decided about, go one conversation without using your file on them. Let them be new for ten minutes.
  3. When a coworker drops the ball and you feel the case building in your mind, ask what the day looks like from where they are standing before you say anything.

What standard am I holding other people to, that I quietly excuse in myself?

The same truth in other traditions

Taoism · Zhuangzi

He pointed out that what one person calls beautiful another calls ugly, and both are sure. The scale was built by the one holding it.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

He reminded himself that people act badly out of ignorance of the good, and that they are kin to him. A measure taken in anger is never a measure of the other person.

Buddhism

The teaching on equanimity holds every being as equally deserving of kindness, friend and stranger and difficult person alike. The moment you sort them, you are weighing yourself.

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