Bible Strands
Proverbs 15:17
Better a dish of vegetables where there is love than a fattened ox with hatred.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The wisdom author addresses students making daily choices, positioning this verse between two other comparative instructions on wealth and temperament. The moment functions as a direct practical ruling on how to weigh material provision against relational climate.
The words — אֲרֻחַת ('a.ru.Chat) means a portion or meal, and אָבֻס ('a.Vus) means fattened or specially prepared for slaughter. These terms frame the text’s literal contrast between a simple shared dish and an extravagant feast.
The thread — The text’s preference for modest meals over lavish feasting runs through Proverbs 17:1, which favors a dry morsel in quietness to a house full of strife. It aligns with Proverbs 21:19’s choice of desert solitude over a contentious home, and Psalms 133:1’s observation that brotherly harmony is inherently good.
Why it lands — The text states that a vegetable dish shared in love surpasses a fattened ox consumed in hatred. It asks a reader to deliberately select relational peace over material abundance, treating harmony as the primary metric for a good life.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
Cross-references
- Proverbs 17:1 Better a dry morsel in quietness than a house full of feasting with strife.
- Proverbs 21:19 Better to live in the desert than with a contentious and ill-tempered wife.
- Psalms 133:1 A song of ascents. Of David. Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!
- Matthew 22:4 Again, he sent other servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and fattened cattle have been killed, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
- Philippians 2:1 Therefore if you have any encouragement in Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and compassion,
- 1 John 4:16 And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
- Luke 15:23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us feast and celebrate.