The Zero-Sum Fool: The Way Down is Up Text: Proverbs 22:16
Introduction: The World's Rigged Game
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied wisdom. It is not a collection of pious platitudes for needlepoint pillows. It is a divine field manual for navigating a world that is shot through with folly, deceit, and economic insanity. And our text today is a sharp, two-edged proverb that cuts to the very heart of how fallen men think about wealth. It describes a man who sees the world as a fixed pie, a zero-sum game. For him to get more, someone else must get less. And for him to get in with the big shots, he has to buy his way in. He is a man who thinks in terms of carnality, not covenant. He sees only what is directly in front of him, and so he is blind to the laws of the harvest that God has woven into the very fabric of reality.
We live in an age that is economically schizophrenic. On the one hand, we have the socialist impulse, which sees all wealth as ill-gotten and seeks to punish the rich by taking their money and giving it to the poor, all managed by a bloated and inefficient state. This is a form of institutionalized envy. On the other hand, we have a crony-capitalist impulse, where big business and big government get into bed together to rig the game, creating regulations that crush small competitors and handing out subsidies and bailouts. This is a form of institutionalized favoritism. Both are forms of theft. Both are expressions of the folly described in our text.
This proverb gives us two seemingly different paths that lead to the same destination: poverty. One is the path of cruel exploitation, and the other is the path of slick sycophancy. One is a bully with a club, the other is a flatterer with a gift basket. But God is not mocked. He has established a moral universe with fixed economic laws. When you defy His laws, you do not break them; you break yourself against them. This verse is a divine guarantee of this principle. It shows us two ways to get ahead that are really just two ways to fall flat on your face. It is a warning against all godless economic calculation, whether it comes from the brutish oppressor or the smooth operator.
The Text
"He who oppresses the poor to make more for himself Or who gives to the rich will only come to lack."
(Proverbs 22:16 LSB)
Two Paths to Poverty
This proverb is structured as a parallelism, presenting two distinct actions that, contrary to all worldly calculation, result in the same disastrous outcome. The man in this proverb is trying to climb the ladder of success, but he has placed his ladder against the wrong wall. He is trying to go up, but every rung he climbs is actually a step down. Let us take these two paths one at a time.
"He who oppresses the poor to make more for himself..."
The first path is the way of the brute. This is the man who sees the poor not as a neighbor to be helped, but as a resource to be plundered. The word "oppress" here means to crush, to exploit, to defraud. This is not the picture of a free and honest transaction where both parties benefit. This is the landlord who extorts, the employer who withholds wages (James 5:4), the lender who charges usurious rates, or the powerful man who uses the courts to steal the poor man's land. His goal is explicit: "to make more for himself." He is not just incidentally harming the poor; he is using their vulnerability as his business model.
In our day, this oppression can be far more sophisticated than simple strong-arm tactics. Think of the hidden tax of inflation, cooked up by governments and central banks, which silently erodes the savings of the poor and those on fixed incomes. It is a form of systemic, legalized oppression. Think of payday loan operations that trap the desperate in cycles of debt. Think of regulatory bodies that create so much red tape that a small businessman cannot hope to compete with the corporate giant who can afford a whole floor of compliance lawyers. This is oppression with a clean suit and a briefcase, but it is oppression nonetheless.
Why does this lead to poverty? Because God Himself is the defender of the poor. "Do not rob the poor because he is poor, Nor oppress the afflicted at the gate; For the LORD will plead their case, And plunder the soul of those who plunder them" (Proverbs 22:22-23). The man who oppresses the poor is picking a fight with the Almighty. He is attempting to build his financial house on a foundation that God has promised to personally demolish. He may see a short-term gain, but he is incurring a long-term, infinite liability. The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked (Prov. 3:33). Whatever he gains is cursed, and a cursed gain is no gain at all. It is sand in his engine, rot in his beams, and a hole in his pockets.
The Second Path to Ruin
The second half of the proverb describes a man who seems to be playing a much smarter, more sophisticated game.
"...Or who gives to the rich will only come to lack."
This is not talking about giving a birthday present to a wealthy friend. The context is economic striving. This is the man who uses "gifts" as a form of grease, a way to curry favor with those in power. This is the sycophant, the lobbyist, the crony. He gives to the rich man, the powerful politician, or the influential bureaucrat, not out of generosity, but as an investment in corruption. He is trying to buy influence, to get a favorable ruling, to secure a government contract, to get a subsidy that his competitors do not get.
He is giving to the man who does not need it in order to get something he does not deserve. This is the very essence of what we call cronyism. It is an attempt to rig the market, to bypass the laws of supply and demand, and to replace honest service and competition with backroom deals. It is a form of economic blasphemy, because it seeks to gain by flattery and bribery what God intends to be gained through diligent, creative, and honest labor.
And why does this man also come to poverty? For several reasons. First, the rich man he is bribing is often just as faithless as he is. The favor he buys today can be sold to a higher bidder tomorrow. There is no honor among thieves. Second, he is building his enterprise on an unstable foundation of political favor, which can vanish with the next election cycle. What the government gives, the government can take away. But most importantly, he too is defying God's economic order. God's economy is based on service. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In a free and honest market, you get rich by providing goods or services that other people want and need. You serve them. The crony, by contrast, seeks to get rich by serving the powerful at the expense of everyone else. He is despising his real neighbors in order to flatter a man in high places. This is a fool's errand, and it ends in ruin. He spends his substance trying to buy what cannot be truly owned, and in the end, he has nothing.
The Divine Reversal
So we have two men, the bully and the bootlicker. Both are trying to get rich by gaming the system, by taking a shortcut through God's ordained path of diligent labor and faithful service. And God says that both of their schemes will backfire spectacularly. They will "only come to lack." The Hebrew word means they will come to poverty, to want, to destitution. The very thing they were trying to escape by their cleverness and cruelty is the very thing that will hunt them down.
This is because the universe is not a closed system. It is not a zero-sum game. God is in it. And God is a God of justice and abundance. He is the one who gives the power to get wealth (Deut. 8:18). Wealth that comes as a blessing from Him "maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it" (Prov. 10:22). But wealth gotten by vanity, by oppression, by corruption, will diminish (Prov. 13:11).
The truly biblical path to prosperity is the polar opposite of the two paths in our text. Instead of oppressing the poor, the righteous man is to be generous to the poor. "He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor" (Prov. 22:9). "He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack" (Prov. 28:27). Notice the direct contrast. The man in our text oppresses the poor to get more, and ends up with nothing. The righteous man gives to the poor, and does not lack. This is the divine reversal. This is God's economy. It is an economy of grace, where you get by giving away.
Conclusion: The Gospel Economy
This proverb is a sharp condemnation of all economic systems built on envy, theft, and godless pragmatism. But it is more than that. It points us to the ultimate economic reality of the gospel. The gospel is the ultimate divine reversal.
We were the poor. We were spiritually destitute, bankrupt, with nothing to offer. We were oppressed by sin, death, and the devil. We were utterly without resource. And what did God do? Did He oppress us further? Did He demand payment we could not make? No. He did the opposite of the fool in this proverb.
The Lord Jesus Christ, who was infinitely rich, did not give to the rich to secure His position. He gave to the poor. He saw us in our poverty, and He made Himself poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). He did not oppress the poor; He became poor for us. He did not give to the rich; He gave Himself, the greatest of all riches, to the bankrupt. He did not come to lack because of some miscalculation. He willingly embraced lack, poverty, and the cross for our sake.
And because He did this, because He followed the path of ultimate generosity and self-sacrifice, God the Father exalted Him to the highest place. Because He went down, He was raised up. This is the pattern. The way down is the way up. The way of giving is the way of receiving. The way of service is the way of dominion.
Therefore, we are called to live in this gospel economy. We are to reject the world's rigged game, with its oppression and its cronyism. We are to work diligently, serve our neighbors honestly, and be radically generous to the poor, not as a strategy to get rich, but as a reflection of the grace we have received. We do this knowing that our God is the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and He will not allow those who trust and obey Him to ultimately come to lack. He who did not spare His own Son, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? That is a bank you can trust.