Proverbs 23:21 · World English Bible
Proverbs 23:21 Meaning For the Drunkard and the Glutton Shall
for the drunkard and the glutton shall become poor; and drowsiness clothes them in rags.
What does Proverbs 23:21 mean?
A mind that keeps trying to muffle its guilt with excess grows poorer, not richer, for every attempt to escape awareness leaves it further from the wealth of its own innocence. The drunkard and the glutton stand for any thought that feeds on the body to avoid the mind, and such feeding always ends in lack, because it seeks fullness where none was ever kept.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 23:21 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A mind that keeps trying to muffle its guilt with excess grows poorer, not richer, for every attempt to escape awareness leaves it further from the wealth of its own innocence. The drunkard and the glutton stand for any thought that feeds on the body to avoid the mind, and such feeding always ends in lack, because it seeks fullness where none was ever kept.
The drowsiness is the sleep of forgetting, the dream in which a mind mistakes itself for a body and wanders clothed in the poverty of that error. To wake is simply to remember the riches were never lost.
Drunkard: the thought that drowns awareness to avoid its guilt, the mind fleeing correction into a fog Glutton: the craving that seeks in the body a fullness only love supplies, the appetite that leaves the mind emptier the more it is fed Rags: the impoverished self-image a mind wears while it sleeps in forgetting, the covering of a wealth mistaken for loss
Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app
Christian Psychology lens
Live Proverbs 23:21 today
- Count the hours you actually spent on a screen today, without judging the number. Just let yourself see what the time was spent on.
- Do one small thing for someone at home or at work that you have been too foggy to get to. The fog lifts from the doing, not before it.
- When a long day tempts you to check out entirely, do the smallest useful thing instead: one dish, one reply, one walk around the block. Small action is how the sleep breaks.
Where have you been living as if you had less than you do?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Dhammapada
The heedless live as if asleep and lose what the attentive keep, for forgetfulness is its own poverty. Waking is not acquiring, it is remembering.
Stoicism · Seneca
It is not the one who has little who is poor but the one who craves more, so appetite itself is the lack. Wealth is measured by what you no longer need.
Taoism · Tao Te Ching
The one who knows when there is enough is already rich, and no amount reaches enough for the one who does not. Lack is a habit of mind before it is a condition.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Proverbs 23 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store