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Proverbs 21:22 · World English Bible

Proverbs 21:22 Meaning A Wise Man Scales the City

A wise man scales the city of the mighty, and brings down the strength of its confidence.

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What does Proverbs 21:22 mean?

The city that seems so strong is the ego's fortress, built high on the belief that fear is powerful and attack can keep a mind safe. It looks impregnable from below, walled and armed, and the whole world bows to it.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 21:22 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The city that seems so strong is the ego's fortress, built high on the belief that fear is powerful and attack can keep a mind safe. It looks impregnable from below, walled and armed, and the whole world bows to it. Yet it is undone not by a greater force but by a change of mind, for the one strength the fortress cannot withstand is the quiet refusal to be afraid of it. A single mind that will not attack has already climbed the wall.

The defenses fall because they were never real. What guarded the city was only the belief that it needed guarding, and that belief dissolves the moment love is chosen over fear.

City of the mighty: the ego's stronghold in the mind, the fortress of fear that looks unassailable until it is questioned Strength of the confidence: the seeming power of the defenses, the trust in attack that keeps the fortress standing only while it is believed

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 21:22 today

  1. Name the thing you have been dreading all week, the call, the message, the email, and look straight at it for a minute instead of around it.
  2. With the person who intimidates you, speak plainly and without the armor, and see how much of their size was something you were supplying.
  3. When a tense moment arrives, in a meeting, a disagreement, a hard conversation, unclench your jaw, lower your voice, and refuse to make it a fight.

What have I been treating as too big to face, and where did it get its size?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 43

The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest. Yielding wins where force cannot.

Buddhism · Dhammapada

Hatred is never ended by hatred. It ends only by the one who sets it down.

Stoicism · Epictetus

What frightens you has no power of its own. It borrows all of it from your agreement that it is fearful.

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