14 The wise lay up knowledge,
but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.
15 A rich man's wealth is his strong city;
the poverty of the poor is their ruin.
16 The wage of the righteous leads to life,
the gain of the wicked to sin.
17 Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life,
but he who rejects reproof leads others astray.
'Lay up' in 14 means, according to Kidner 'keep in store for the right occasion', and the reference is to discretion. The RSV renders 14b more clearly: 'the babbling of a fool brings ruin near'. We could link this with what was said in yesterday's Note. In relation to gossiping - what harm it can do, and what dangerous situations it can create. But it has a more general reference also: we have all known occasions in company when something ill-advised and indiscreet has been blurted out which has caused endless embarrassment and even hurt. A discreet person would have had more sense than say such a thing. We must not read more into 15 than is intended: all that is being emphasised is that realism, not romanticism, must be the criterion in matters of money. Nor must we read too much into the contrast between rich and poor, as if being rich were equated with righteousness and being poor with sin. There is no thought in 15 and 16 of the problems of grinding poverty, the poverty that is not a man's fault. Rather, what underlies the teaching here is the general contrast that these chapters deal with between prudence and improvidence. The idea is that the man who is prudent is a man who is likely to get on in life, and the man who is improvident won't. It is all a question of what and how much a man is prepared to discipline in his life. A man uses his possessions according to his character: if he is a disciplined character, his labour will be put to good use, and there will be fruit from it; if he is not, his money will go down the drain in smoking, drinking and gambling. The money that some men and their wives have spent on smoking cigarettes for the past twenty five years would have been enough to have bought them a very substantial house and property. This is the kind of idea these verses have in mind.