Proverbs 22:4 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

By humility; or, because of humility; or, as many others render it, the reward of humility; that reward which God hath graciously promised and will give to humility; which is a grace of great price in God's eyes. See Isaiah 57:15 James 4:6. The fear of the Lord; by which he distinguisheth true and Christian humility from counterfeit and moral humility, because that ariseth from a deep sense of God's greatness, and purity, and perfection, compared with our meanness, and filthiness and manifold imperfections, whereas this is quite of another nature, and from other grounds. Life; the comforts of this life, and the happiness of the next, both which are promised to godliness, 1 Thessalonians 4:8.