Proverbs 22:7–9

Proverbs 22:7 — "The rich rule over the poor"

The Hebrew of verse 7 is blunt and sociologically precise: עָשִׁיר בְּרָשִׁים יִמְשׁוֹל — "the rich man over the poor ones rules." The verb māshal (to rule, to have dominion) is the same word used of the sun and moon governing day and night (Gen 1:18) and of the dominion given to humanity over creation (Gen 1:26). Its use here is deliberately unsentimental: the sage does not moralize, he observes. Economic asymmetry produces social hierarchy, and social hierarchy produces power over persons. The second half of the verse, often partially omitted in citations, specifies the mechanism: "and the borrower is slave to the lender." The word eved — slave, servant — is unambiguous. Debt is not merely inconvenient; it constitutes a form of bondage. The sage is not endorsing this arrangement; he is naming it with prophetic clarity, so that his students — young men navigating the economic world — will understand what wealth and debt actually are beneath their polite social surfaces. This is wisdom as social realism in service of moral formation.

Proverbs 22:8 — "He who sows wickedness reaps trouble"

Verse 8 introduces the agricultural metaphor of sowing and reaping, which carries enormous biblical weight. The Hebrew 'aven (wickedness, trouble, iniquity) denotes not merely moral evil in the abstract but the kind of purposeful injustice — exploitation, manipulation, oppression — that a person in the position described in verse 7 might wield against the vulnerable. The reaping of 'aven as consequence is the doctrine of moral retribution expressed in seed-form: the world is morally structured such that injustice generates its own unraveling. The second half of verse 8 in the Septuagint (which the Church Fathers often quoted) adds a striking phrase: "the rod of his fury shall be brought to nothing," heightening the image of the oppressor's coercive power being stripped away by the harvest of his own wickedness. This gives the verse an implicitly liberating thrust: the instrument of domination does not last.

Proverbs 22:9 — "He who has a generous eye will be blessed"

Against the domination of verse 7 and the retribution of verse 8, verse 9 opens onto genuine hope. The Hebrew idiom tov-'ayin — "good of eye," often translated "generous eye" — is the precise antonym of the ra'-'ayin ("evil eye," stinginess) condemned elsewhere in Proverbs (28:22). The "eye" here is not merely an organ of sight but the faculty of moral attention: how one sees the poor determines how one acts toward them. The generous person is described as sharing (nātan) his bread with the poor — a concrete, embodied act of redistribution. The blessing (yevorakh) promised is God's own pronouncement over this life. The sequence 7–8–9 thus moves from observation → warning → invitation: here is the world; here is where wickedness leads; here is the better path, and it leads to God's blessing.

Catholic tradition reads these verses not as isolated maxims but as a coherent moral theology of wealth and the common good.

The Church Fathers recognized in verse 7's "borrower as slave" a warning against the spiritual captivity that accompanies disordered attachment to wealth and debt. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on the dangers of avarice, drew on precisely this Solomonic tradition: "Nothing is baser than the man who lends for usury... he reduces a free man to slavery by means of coins" (Homilies on Matthew, 56). St. Basil the Great, in his homily To the Rich, treats the hoarding of bread as robbery from the hungry — an implicit commentary on verse 9's instruction that the blessed man gives his bread.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church grounds the obligation of generosity in the universal destination of goods: "The ownership of any property makes its holder a steward of Providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others, first of all his family" (CCC §2404). Verse 9's generous-eyed man is precisely this kind of steward. The Catechism explicitly warns that "the rich man" who ignores the poor "sins gravely" (CCC §2446), reading the prophetic tradition of which Proverbs is a part.

Pope Francis, in Laudato Si' and Evangelii Gaudium, renews this teaching with urgency. His condemnation of "the globalization of indifference" (EG §54) is the contemporary register of verse 7's raw social observation. The sowing and reaping of verse 8 finds its structural parallel in the Pope's teaching that unjust economic systems generate systemic suffering that eventually collapses upon itself.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica II-II, q. 66, a. 7) taught that in cases of extreme need, taking from another's surplus is not theft, because the universal destination of goods takes priority over private ownership — a principle that illuminates verse 9 as a positive command rather than a mere pious suggestion.

These verses confront the contemporary Catholic with uncomfortable specificity. Verse 7 names a dynamic most of us participate in without naming it: credit card debt, student loans, and predatory lending disproportionately binding the poor while the wealthy accumulate. The Catholic is asked not to look away from this structure. Verse 8 warns those in positions of economic power — employers, landlords, investors, policy-makers — that systems of exploitation carry a moral cost that compounds, not merely for the victim but for the perpetrator.

Verse 9's "generous eye" is a practical discipline, not a feeling. It asks: Do I see the poor? Do I allow their need to land on me and change my behavior? Concretely, this might mean: examining whether one's investment portfolio profits from exploitative labor; whether one tips generously; whether one advocates for just wages in one's workplace or parish community. The "eye" must be trained — by prayer, examination of conscience, and works of mercy — before the hand can be opened. The blessing promised is not merely spiritual consolation; in the wisdom tradition, it is the flourishing that attends a life rightly ordered to God and neighbor.