Proverbs 22:23 · World English Bible
Proverbs 22:23 Meaning For Yahweh Will Plead Their Case
for Yahweh will plead their case, and plunder the life of those who plunder them.
What does Proverbs 22:23 mean?
When a mind fears that the weak go undefended, it imagines it must take up their cause with force, matching harm for harm. Yet love needs no such weapon.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 22:23 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
When a mind fears that the weak go undefended, it imagines it must take up their cause with force, matching harm for harm. Yet love needs no such weapon. What a mind does to another it does first within itself, so the one who robs another of innocence has already emptied his own, and the loss he inflicts is the loss he suffers. Nothing must be arranged to make this so; it is the simple law of a mind that cannot give what it will not keep.
The defense of the innocent is not an attack returned but the quiet certainty that innocence cannot truly be taken. A mind that trusts this stops rushing to punish, for it sees that the harm was a figure in a dream and the one who seemed wronged was never really touched.
The LORD: the love within the mind that upholds every cause without attacking, the certainty that innocence cannot be lost.
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Live Proverbs 22:23 today
- If you have been rehearsing a reply to someone who treated you badly, write it out and do not send it. Then ask what in you still needs them to be punished before you can be okay.
- When a friend tells you how someone wronged them, resist joining the case against that person. Stay with your friend instead, and let the verdict go unspoken.
- At work, when you could quietly let someone's mistake land on them and watch it cost them, don't. Flag it early, fix it if you can, and skip the part where the record gets set straight.
What am I still waiting for someone to pay before I let myself be at peace?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 73
Heaven's net is wide and nothing slips through it, yet it does nothing. What goes around does not need your hand to help it.
Buddhism · Dhammapada
Hatred never ends through hatred. The one who harms carries the harm, and the one who lets it go sets down a weight that was never theirs to carry.
Stoicism · Epictetus
No one can truly wrong what is yours, your own will and character. Wrongdoers damage themselves first, so there is nothing left for you to avenge.
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