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Proverbs 20:15 · World English Bible

Proverbs 20:15 Meaning There Is Gold and Abundance of Rubies

There is gold and abundance of rubies, but the lips of knowledge are a rare jewel.

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What does Proverbs 20:15 mean?

The mind heaps up treasures it can lose, and calls this wealth, yet nothing the world stores can answer the one need underneath the wanting. Gold and rubies stand for every outer thing sought to fill an inner lack, and they never fill it, because the lack was never outside.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 20:15 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The mind heaps up treasures it can lose, and calls this wealth, yet nothing the world stores can answer the one need underneath the wanting. Gold and rubies stand for every outer thing sought to fill an inner lack, and they never fill it, because the lack was never outside. There is a richer possession, and it costs nothing to hold: a way of speaking and seeing that comes from remembering what a brother truly is.

When words carry the recognition of innocence rather than the verdict of guilt, the mind has found the one jewel that cannot be taken. That is the wealth love teaches, and it is simply the truth spoken gently to another.

Gold and rubies: the outer treasures the mind piles up to fill an inner lack, the possessions it can always lose because they were never the thing it needed. Jewel: the one wealth that cannot be taken, the seeing of a brother's innocence carried in how the mind speaks and looks.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 20:15 today

  1. Before you send the message you have already drafted in your head, read it once for whether it treats the person as guilty or as a person. Change one word if you need to.
  2. Tell someone today something good you actually see in them and have never said out loud. Not flattery, not a thank-you for a task, just the thing you have quietly thought and kept to yourself.
  3. In a meeting or a family dinner where a verdict is being handed down about someone absent, be the one who adds the fairer sentence. You do not have to defend them, just keep the door open.

What would change in me if how I speak about people were the only wealth I counted?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching

True words are not ornamented and ornamented words are not true; the plain word spoken with care is worth more than all the treasure a house can hold.

Buddhism

Right speech is one of the steps of the path: speak what is true, kind, and timely, and leave off what divides. This is counted as a practice, not a politeness.

Confucianism · Analects

The one of character is slow in speech and quick in action, because a word let loose easily is a word that cannot be matched by a life.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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