John Gill Commentary Proverbs 18:11

"The rich man`s wealth is his strong city, And as a high wall in his own imagination." — Proverbs 18:11 (ASV)

The rich man's wealth [is] his strong city In which he dwells, over which he presides; in which he places his trust and confidence, and thinks himself safe from every enemy and from all trouble: as one ^F19 observes, "the abundance of a rich man's wealth he conceives to be as it were the abundance of people in a "city"; the telling of his money he imagines to be the walking of people up and down the streets; his bags standing thick together to be so many houses standing close one to the other; his iron barred chests to be so many bulwarks; his bonds and bills to be his cannons and demi-cannons, his great ordinance; and in the midst of these he thinks himself environed with a "great wall", which no trouble is able to leap over, which no misery is able to break through."

As it follows; and as a high wall in his own conceit : which not only separates and distinguishes him from others; but, as he imagines, will secure him from all dangers, and will be abiding, lasting, and durable: but all this is only "in his own conceit", or "imagery" ^F20 ; in the chambers of his imagery, as Jarchi, referring to (Ezekiel 8:12) ; where the same word is used; for this wall shall not stand; these riches cannot secure themselves, they take wing and fly away; and much less the owner of them, not from public calamities, nor from personal diseases of body, nor from death, nor from wrath to come.

---

FOOTNOTES:

• F19: Jermin its loc.
• F20: (wtykvmb) "in imaginatione ejus", Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator, Cocceius, Gejerus, Schultens; "in imagine sua", Mercerus.