Foolishness that harms one’s household leads to emptiness, while wisdom creates lasting strength.
In Proverbs 11:29, Solomon writes, He who troubles his own house will inherit wind, and the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted (v. 29). To trouble one’s own house is to disrupt the very sphere one has been called to steward. It is a failure of responsibility at the most immediate level.
To inherit wind means to gain nothing substantial. The person who tears apart his own household through folly, harshness, selfishness, or disorder ends up with emptiness. He has consumed what should have been cultivated.
The second line shows the humbling result: the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted. Folly diminishes stewardship and forfeits strength. Wisdom, by contrast, builds the kind of life that becomes dependable and therefore capable of leadership.
Proverbs 11:29
29 He who troubles his own house will inherit wind,
And the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted.
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Proverbs 11:29 meaning
In Proverbs 11:29, Solomon writes, He who troubles his own house will inherit wind, and the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted (v. 29). To trouble one’s own house is to disrupt the very sphere one has been called to steward. It is a failure of responsibility at the most immediate level.
To inherit wind means to gain nothing substantial. The person who tears apart his own household through folly, harshness, selfishness, or disorder ends up with emptiness. He has consumed what should have been cultivated.
The second line shows the humbling result: the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted. Folly diminishes stewardship and forfeits strength. Wisdom, by contrast, builds the kind of life that becomes dependable and therefore capable of leadership.