This verse may be a continuation of the thought of verse 1 that a person’s reputation is worth more than wealth. More likely, as a separate saying it shows that all people have their rights and should be respected, since the Lord has created them all.

“The rich and the poor meet together”: The verb “meet together” or “meet each other” does not refer to meeting in a physical sense. The meaning is well expressed by New Revised Standard Version, New International Version, Revised English Bible, and Good News Translation: “have this in common.” “The rich” and “the poor” are singular in Hebrew, but in some languages the plural will be more natural: “rich people and poor people.”

“The Lord is the maker of them all”: This is literally “the one making them all [is] the Lord.” If we use singulars in the first line (“the rich person” and “the poor person”) we may need to render the Hebrew plural “them all” in this line as a dual pronoun, “them-two” or “both of them.”

Some translations restructure the two lines of the verse into a single simple sentence. Contemporary English Version, for instance, has “The rich and the poor are all created by the Lord”; another way of expressing this is “The Lord has made all people, the people with money and the poor people too.”

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 .