Differing weights and false scales are detestable to the LORD, who refuses to let crooked commerce stand unnamed.
Proverbs 20:23 returns to the same theme introduced earlier in verse 10: Differing weights are an abomination to the LORD, and a false scale is not good (v. 23). The repetition is deliberate and underscores how seriously God takes ordinary commerce.
By naming the offense of differing weights twice in the same chapter, Solomon refuses to let the student treat it as a minor matter. Weights are small objects, but the character they reveal is not small.
A false scale is not good. A crooked scale is woven into the fabric of every transaction it touches. It cheats not just one customer but in all of them, quietly enough that no one may ever name it; but the LORD does. That is what the proverb is emphasizing.
Proverbs 20:23
23 Differing weights are an abomination to the LORD,
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Proverbs 20:23 meaning
Proverbs 20:23 returns to the same theme introduced earlier in verse 10: Differing weights are an abomination to the LORD, and a false scale is not good (v. 23). The repetition is deliberate and underscores how seriously God takes ordinary commerce.
By naming the offense of differing weights twice in the same chapter, Solomon refuses to let the student treat it as a minor matter. Weights are small objects, but the character they reveal is not small.
A false scale is not good. A crooked scale is woven into the fabric of every transaction it touches. It cheats not just one customer but in all of them, quietly enough that no one may ever name it; but the LORD does. That is what the proverb is emphasizing.