The term “righteousness” is a common element in verses 4-6. The heading used by Toy for verses 3-6 is “The saving power of goodness contrasted with the destructive power of evil.” Scott gives the theme of these verses as “the survival value of virtue or ‘righteousness.'”

“Riches do not profit in the day of wrath”: “Do not profit” means that riches have no advantage, will do a person no good, or have no value. See 10.2 for comments. “The day of wrath”, as used in the prophets, is the time in which the Lord brings famine, pestilence, or exile on Israel or other nations. See Ezek 7.9; Isa 10.3. In the Wisdom books it is the day of retribution for the individual sinner, which from the parallelism of this verse may be a reference to death (see below). Whybray argues that the sense here is that the “Riches” referred to have been obtained wrongfully, as in 10.2, and the person who gets wealth in this way brings the anger of the Lord upon himself. Being rich will not protect him from the consequences of his evil. However, there is nothing here to say that wealth in itself is wrong; the saying rather suggests that it is unsafe to rely on riches when faced with calamity or death. We may translate, for example, “On the day when God judges us, all the things a rich man has will not help him.”

“But righteousness delivers from death”: This line is the same as the second line of 10.2. See there for translation. For “righteousness” see 8.20. “Death” here has the sense of a premature and unhappy death brought on the wicked by the Lord. For a good model translation see Good News Translation.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .