Proverbs 28:8 · World English Bible
Proverbs 28:8 Meaning He Who Increases His Wealth by Excessive
He who increases his wealth by excessive interest gathers it for one who has pity on the poor.
What does Proverbs 28:8 mean?
A mind that piles up its store through pressure and injustice is not truly building; it is only holding, for a while, what love will one day put to gentler use. Guilt imagines it can secure itself by taking, hoarding proof of its own worth against a threatening world.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 28:8 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A mind that piles up its store through pressure and injustice is not truly building; it is only holding, for a while, what love will one day put to gentler use. Guilt imagines it can secure itself by taking, hoarding proof of its own worth against a threatening world. Yet nothing gathered by fear stays with fear.
What the grasping self accumulates is quietly being kept for kindness, for the part of the mind that will at last look on lack with compassion instead of appetite. The getting was never the point. Everything a frightened mind heaps up is finally handed over to the teacher who gives, and there it becomes what it was always meant to be.
Substance: the store a frightened mind heaps up as proof of its worth, the hoard it imagines can secure it against a threatening world Him that will pity the poor: the compassionate part of the mind, the loving teacher into whose keeping everything fear gathered is finally handed
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Live Proverbs 28:8 today
- Find one thing in your home you have been keeping just in case and give it to someone who needs it this week. Feel how little you lose and how much lighter the shelf gets.
- When you catch yourself quietly keeping score of what you have given someone, let the tally go. A gift you are still counting was a loan.
- In a negotiation where you could squeeze a little more out of someone who cannot push back, take the fair number instead. The extra was never going to stay with you anyway.
What am I holding on to as proof that I am safe?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching
Water gathers in the low places and gives itself away, and so it never runs out. What is hoarded stagnates, what flows stays alive.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
You hold nothing permanently, you only use it for a while and hand it on. Everything you call yours is on loan from the world you will return it to.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
What you grasped tightly does not follow you out, only what you did with it. The hoard changes hands, the kindness does not.
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