The Friendship Test of an Empty Wallet Text: Proverbs 19:7
Introduction: The Hard Ground of Reality
The book of Proverbs is not a collection of inspirational quotes for coffee mugs. It is a divine education in the nature of reality. It is filled with hard-nosed, unsentimental observations about the way the world actually works, because you cannot navigate a ship through treacherous waters if your map is a sentimental cartoon. Our modern age, soaked as it is in the therapeutic syrup of self-esteem, wants reality to be nice. It wants everyone to be affirmed, it wants every circumstance to be a learning experience, and it wants every relationship to be unconditionally supportive. In short, it wants a world that does not exist.
Into this fog of wishful thinking, the book of Proverbs shines a bright, and often harsh, light. Proverbs are not geometric axioms, true in every conceivable instance. A lazy man might win the lottery, and a diligent man might see his business destroyed by a flood. But proverbs describe the grain of the wood, the way things generally and almost always go. They are divine generalizations for living in a rough-and-tumble world. And the proverb before us today is one of the roughest.
It deals with a subject we would rather avoid: the intersection of poverty and relationships. It is a bitter pill. It describes a world where loyalty is conditional, where friendship is a function of utility, and where even the bonds of blood can be dissolved by the acid of financial hardship. This is not a description of how the world ought to be in a redeemed state. It is a stark photograph of how the world is in its fallenness. And we must look at it squarely, because in seeing the disease so clearly diagnosed, we can better appreciate the radical nature of the cure offered in the gospel.
The Text
All the brothers of a poor man hate him;
How much more do his friends distance themselves from him!
He pursues them with words, but they are no more.
(Proverbs 19:7 LSB)
The Failure of Kin (v. 7a)
The proverb begins with a shocking and brutal statement:
"All the brothers of a poor man hate him;" (Proverbs 19:7a)
Now, is this to be taken with wooden literalness? Does every brother of every poor man, without exception, feel a burning, personal animosity toward him? Of course not. This is sanctified hyperbole, a rhetorical device meant to shock us into seeing a painful truth. The word "hate" here does not necessarily mean visceral, emotional loathing, but rather a practical rejection, a shunning, a treating of someone as though they were an enemy. It is the opposite of covenantal solidarity.
The family is the most basic unit of society, the first circle of covenantal obligation. Your brother is the one person who is supposed to be there for you when the entire world walks out. This proverb tells us that poverty is such a powerful corrosive that it can eat away even at this foundational bond. Why? Because the poor man becomes a burden. He is a constant reminder of need. His presence is an implicit request. He is a drain on resources, a source of shame in a world that worships success, an awkward problem at family gatherings. And so, his brothers, who should be his first line of defense, become his first line of deserters. Their love, which should be grounded in blood and covenant, is revealed to be conditional, trumped by their love of comfort, convenience, and their own reputation.
This is a diagnostic of the sinful human heart. Our default setting is selfishness. We are naturally inclined to measure relationships by what we get out of them. When a relationship shifts from being a net gain to a net loss in our personal comfort ledger, our fallen instinct is to cut it loose. This proverb forces us to look at that ugly instinct, even when it appears in the one place it should not: the family.
The Failure of Friends (v. 7b)
From the inner circle of family, the proverb moves outward to the next circle of relationship, and the logic is cruelly simple.
"How much more do his friends distance themselves from him!" (Proverbs 19:7b LSB)
This is an argument from the lesser to the greater. If the foundational bond of brotherhood can crack under the strain of poverty, what hope is there for the more voluntary association of friendship? If those bound by blood and a shared upbringing will abandon him, how much more quickly will those bound only by common interest and mutual affection do so?
This verse acts as a potent test, revealing the nature of our friendships. The book of Proverbs elsewhere distinguishes between a true friend who "sticks closer than a brother" (Prov. 18:24) and the so-called friends who are drawn to a man who gives gifts (Prov. 19:6). Poverty is the great revealer. It sifts your friends. The man with a full wallet is surrounded by companions, but the man with an empty one discovers who his true friends are. Usually, it is a much smaller number than he thought.
The fair-weather friend sees the poor man as a liability. He can no longer contribute to the shared meals, he cannot participate in the same activities, and his constant neediness is a drag on the mood. The relationship was built on the shifting sands of mutual benefit and shared pleasures. When the benefits dry up, the "friendship" evaporates. They "distance themselves." It often starts subtly, with unanswered calls and missed appointments, but the result is the same: isolation.
The Failure of Words (v. 7c)
The final clause paints a picture of pathetic desperation and ultimate loneliness.
"He pursues them with words, but they are no more." (Proverbs 19:7c LSB)
The poor man has nothing left to offer. He has no money, no gifts, no influence. All he has is his voice. He pursues his former friends and brothers with words. These are words of appeal, words reminding them of past loyalties, words pleading for help, words of desperation. He is chasing after ghosts, trying to grasp a relationship that has already vanished.
But his words are met with emptiness. "They are no more." The Hebrew is stark and abrupt; it simply says "they not." They are gone. They do not exist for him anymore. His words, having no currency to back them up, are worthless in the fallen marketplace of human relationships. He is talking to himself. This is the final, devastating outcome of a life where human connection is treated as a transaction. When you can no longer pay, you are cast out of the market, utterly alone.
The Gospel for the Poor Man
If the proverb ended there, it would be nothing more than a cynical, depressing observation. But it does not stand alone. It stands within the canon of Scripture, which is the story of a God who operates on a completely different economy. This proverb is a perfect, dark velvet backdrop against which the diamond of the gospel shines with breathtaking brilliance.
Consider the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate fulfillment of this proverb. "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich" (2 Cor. 8:9). He willingly entered into the ultimate poverty.
And what happened? "All the brothers of a poor man hate him." His own brothers, the Jewish people, the sons of Abraham, hated Him and rejected Him. "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him" (John 1:11).
"How much more do his friends distance themselves from him!" On the night He was betrayed, in His hour of greatest need, His closest friends, the disciples He had poured His life into for three years, all distanced themselves and fled. Peter, his chief disciple, denied even knowing Him.
"He pursues them with words, but they are no more." In the garden, He pursued them with words: "Could you not watch with me one hour?" On the cross, He pursued His Father with words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He was left utterly alone, abandoned by family, friends, and in a profound mystery, even by His God, so that we would never have to be.
This proverb describes us. Spiritually, we are that poor man. We are utterly bankrupt, with nothing to offer God. We pursue Him with words, with empty promises and flimsy resolutions, but they are nothing. And in our spiritual poverty, our natural inclination is to hide from God and from one another.
But Christ is the friend who does not distance Himself from the poor. He is the brother who does not hate. He seeks out the spiritually destitute. He draws near to the bankrupt. He pursues us not with empty words, but with the powerful, creative, redeeming Word made flesh. He does not abandon us in our need; He meets us in our need and becomes our treasure. He is the one friend who sticks closer than a brother, precisely when we have nothing to offer. And because of His glorious work, we are called to be a people who defy this proverb. We are called to be the kind of family that does not shun the brother in need, and the kind of friends who draw nearer, not farther, when hardship comes, proving that our relationships are built not on the transactional economy of the world, but on the grace economy of the gospel.