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Proverbs 5:9 · World English Bible

Proverbs 5:9 Meaning Lest You Give Your Honor to Others

lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one;

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What does Proverbs 5:9 mean?

Honour given to the ego is the mind's own worth handed to a master that cannot return it. The strange thing is that a mind will surrender its sense of value to the very thought that attacks it, and call the surrender realism.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 5:9 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Honour given to the ego is the mind's own worth handed to a master that cannot return it. The strange thing is that a mind will surrender its sense of value to the very thought that attacks it, and call the surrender realism. What feels cruel is never coming from outside; it is guilt turned back upon its maker, wearing the face of others while spending the days of the one who believes in it.

Nothing has truly been taken. A mind can reclaim its worth the instant it remembers where that worth was placed.

Others: the outward faces onto which the mind projects its guilt, seeming to hold what was only ever within. The cruel: the ego seen as harsh, which is the mind's own attack reflected back and felt as a threat from beyond.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 5:9 today

  1. When a number on a screen tells you how you are doing today, likes, sales, steps, messages, say out loud that it is a number. Then go do something that number cannot see.
  2. If someone's offhand comment deflates you this afternoon, do not reorganize your sense of yourself around it. You can let them be wrong and still be warm to them.
  3. In a meeting where someone talks over you, keep your worth out of the exchange. Say your point again, plainly, without the edge that asks them to confirm you.

Whose opinion have I been letting decide what I am worth?

The same truth in other traditions

Stoicism · Epictetus

No one can take your worth. You can only hand it over, and you do it every time you let someone else's opinion decide what you are.

Tao Te Ching 33

Mastering others is a kind of strength. Knowing yourself is a different kind, and only the second one cannot be spent.

Buddhism · the Buddha on the unanswered insult

A gift refused stays with the giver. Harsh words you do not pick up go back where they came from.

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