Bible Strands
Psalms 62:10
Place no trust in extortion or false hope in stolen goods. If your riches increase, do not set your heart upon them.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses a plural audience, following a contrast between God's faithfulness (vv. 1–8) and the futility of human status (v. 9). This is the corrective turn: after affirming where trust belongs, the psalmist names where it does not.
The words — עֹשֶׁק ('o.Shek, "extortion") and גָּזֵל (ga.Zel, "robbery") specify that the wealth in view is ill-gotten, not merely large. The prohibition targets trust in wealth acquired by force or fraud.
The thread — 1 Timothy 6:17 warns the rich not to hope in the uncertainty of wealth; Psalms 52:7 condemns the one who trusted in abundance and strengthened himself by it; Jeremiah 17:11 likens unjustly acquired fortune to a partridge's eggs—lost in the middle of one's days.
Why it lands — The verse does not forbid wealth but forbids making it the object of trust, especially when its origin is unjust. It asks the reader to name the source of their security and test whether it can survive a weighing on the scale (cf. v. 9).
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
Trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery: if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.
Cross-references
- 1 Timothy 6:17 Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be conceited and not to put their hope in the uncertainty of wealth, but in God, who richly provides all things for us to enjoy.
- Psalms 52:7 “Look at the man who did not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his wealth and strengthened himself by destruction.”
- Jeremiah 17:11 Like a partridge hatching eggs it did not lay is the man who makes a fortune unjustly. In the middle of his days his riches will desert him, and in the end he will be the fool.”
- Deuteronomy 6:10 And when the LORD your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that He would give you—a land with great and splendid cities that you did not build,
- Job 31:24 If I have put my trust in gold or called pure gold my security,
- Isaiah 61:8 For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity; in My faithfulness I will give them their recompense and make an everlasting covenant with them.
- 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.
- Deuteronomy 8:12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses in which to dwell,
- Job 20:19 For he has oppressed and forsaken the poor; he has seized houses he did not build.
- Job 20:29 This is the wicked man’s portion from God, the inheritance God has appointed him.”