Don't Wear Yourself Out
for he is keeping track, inwardly counting the cost. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. Proverbs 23:7 · Berean Standard Bible
The stingy person is mentally calculating every penny while pretending to welcome you, so there's a deep dishonesty in the whole exchange.
The 'counting the cost' is internal—they're tallying in their head what they're giving you and resenting every bit of it. Their words say 'enjoy yourself,' but their heart is far away, keeping score.
A father or wise teacher speaking to a young person
This reinforces what Jesus taught about the heart being the source of our actions. Someone can say kind words while their real self is doing something entirely different, and wisdom means being able to see the difference.
The stingy host's hospitality is fundamentally dishonest; his inner calculations and resentment contradict his surface courtesy, and you will sense this deception.
The technical term for 'keeping track' (שׁוׁמר, shomer—literally 'keeper' or 'guardian') paired with 'inwardly counting the cost' reveals a consciousness divided between public performance and private resentment. The sage diagnoses a specific pathology: the capacity to extend surface civility while harboring internal enmity, a form of hypocrisy more dangerous than open hostility.
The wisdom teacher, demonstrating the kind of psychological penetration that marks the finest wisdom literature—the ability to perceive the gap between intention and expression, between what the mouth speaks and what the heart harbors.
This probing of hidden motivations prefigures Jesus's repeated condemnation of the Pharisees' whitewashed sepulchers and his teaching that 'out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks'—establishing that integral wholeness between inner conviction and outer expression marks the wise person.
5When you glance at wealth, it disappears, for it makes wings for itself and flies like an eagle to the sky.
6Do not eat the bread of a stingy man, and do not crave his delicacies;
7for he is keeping track, inwardly counting the cost. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
8You will vomit up what little you have eaten and waste your pleasant words.
9Do not speak to a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.
Read all of Proverbs 23 — Do not wear yourself out to get rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint. Riches sprout wings and fly away like an eagle.
This page covers one. BibleKey does all 31,102 — tap any verse for its meaning, any word for its Hebrew or Greek root, and keep reading without leaving the chapter.
Not just the famous ones. BibleKey is free on iPhone and iPad.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhone & iPad