When I was in my middle and high school years, I would read one chapter of Proverbs a day. Since there are 31 chapters, this worked out nicely from month to month. I read them like fortune cookies though, looking for quick answers to whatever problems (often school related) I found myself facing. This wasn’t all bad, since I was reading Scripture, but it was—at best—an elementary approach to the book of Proverbs. Wisdom literature is meant to be reflected upon, to be practiced, to be lived. A statement like, “A soft answer turns away wrath” (Prov. 15:1, ESV), is easy to read but can feel impossible to live out. We have to walk the path of wisdom, put it to the test, and build on its results.
One theme that comes up repeatedly in Proverbs gives us plenty of opportunities to practice an important characteristic of wise friendship and neighborliness—the virtue of generosity. Our culture doesn’t train us to think in generous terms. In fact, we are often led in the opposite direction. What friendships or neighbors can offer me the most? is the question we may be prone to ask ourselves. But, as God reveals, the way of wisdom is the generous way.
Read Proverbs 3:27-28 below.
When it is in your power,
don’t withhold good from the one to whom it belongs.
Don’t say to your neighbor, “Go away! Come back later.
I’ll give it tomorrow”—when it is there with you.
This proverb focuses on the availability of goods, the stewardship of goods, and the timeliness of giving those goods. There’s an urgency here, a warning not to sit on what we have. The Latin phrase bis dat qui cito dat affirms this idea: he gives twice who gives promptly.1 One scholar explains that the deserving are literally the “owners” of the good due them.
When we withhold a good or benefit, we’re not only being “inconsiderate (Deut. 24:14-15) but unjust (Lev. 19:13).”2 Proverbs 3:28 emphasizes the sin of procrastination, “Don’t say to your neighbor, ‘Go away! Come back later. I’ll give it tomorrow’—when it is there with you.” In the days of Proverbs, “a laborer depended on daily payment of wages to provide his daily needs. Putting him off until later was a selfish, hurtful act.”3
Notice the small phrase in Proverbs 3:27, “to whom it is due.” Have you ever considered that a portion of the money and possessions God has given you to steward is actually due to others? We tend to think that our money, homes, and possessions are solely ours. But Proverbs—and elsewhere in Scripture—places a premium on our duty as good friends and neighbors to not only be generous, but also to give to the poor what is theirs in the first place.
One person gives freely,
yet gains more;
another withholds what is right,
only to become poor.
A generous person will be enriched,
and the one who gives a drink of water
will receive water.
People will curse anyone who hoards grain,
but a blessing will come to the one who sells it.
—Proverbs 11:24-26
A poor person is hated even by his neighbor,
but there are many who love the rich.
The one who despises his neighbor sins,
but whoever shows kindness to the poor will be happy.
—Proverbs 14:20-21
Generosity is a major theme in Proverbs, and its wisdom is counterintuitive. Common sense tells us that hanging onto our money is the surest way to gain wealth, and giving freely will leave us depleted and discontent. But Proverbs’s wisdom reveals that, in God’s economy, the way to being enriched is to be generous. And the way to soul-emptiness is greed.
In these proverbs the backward nature of generosity and kindness is on display. Our natural bent is often to give lower priority to the needy in our midst, while putting on charm for the wealthy. The sage, however, reveals that happiness is reserved for those who care about their underprivileged neighbors.
Jesus says something about this in Luke 14:12-14:
He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid. On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, maimed, lame, or blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Generosity is a disposition of the heart and a way of life. The wisdom of Proverbs, over and over, invites us to live among our neighbors in one of two ways: generous and open (the way of wisdom), or possessive and closed (the way of folly). The first leads to happy fulfillment, the second to misery. Nowhere does this wisdom of generosity show up more brilliantly than in the life of Jesus.
The early church father John Chrysostom said in his sermon about the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), “Not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth but theirs.”4 Let us be good stewards of all that God has given us, and by doing so, may we be enriched in every way in Christ Jesus.
This excerpt from The Way of Wisdom Bible Study was written by Kelly Minter.
The Way of Wisdom
In this 8-session Bible study, six beloved Bible teachers invite you to place your feet firmly on the path of life revealed in the book of Proverbs. As you consider wisdom principles on everyday topics like words, work, friendship, marriage, parenting, neighborliness, money management, leadership influence, and more, you’ll discover the wisdom of Proverbs as an invitation to steadily walk God’s way in God’s world.
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Works Cited
- Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “bis dat qui cito dat,” accessed February 20, 2025, https://www. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bis%20dat%20 qui%20cito%20dat.
- Max Anders, Proverbs, vol. 13, Holman Old Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2005), 278.
- Ibid.
- John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty, trans., Catharine P. Roth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981), 40.
