”Wealth maketh many friends; But the poor is separated from his neighbour.“ Proverbs 19:4
To begin, it is noteworthy there are several different meanings for, “wealth” and “poor,” in Proverbs. This passage has a unique perspective:
Wealth, the idea being presented in this instance, carries the meaning, “to make the hard or heavy work easy.”
Conversely, Poor in this sense, portrays the idea, “weak, sickly, to hang down (as in the head or possibly referring to a lack of male vitality)
The contrast presented in this passage are an ode to capability. Poor is incapable while wealth is capable. We see this is not limited to physical ability only as both Poor and Wealth are presented as open ended ideas. Therefore, being physically strong does not make one this type of wealthy, neither does intelligence or position or any other singular strength or weakness. Financially speaking, however, controlling wealth offers the ability to use money to pay for others to assist you with the work. Whereas having to do all the work by yourself for a longer length of time will wear you out or burn you out and eventually doing it without help leads to being broken which leads into the area of Poor portrayed in this passage.
In another take on the contrast, we see the idea of having ideas as wealth whereas doing the same old thing the same old way is a poor way to proceed. Embracing technology, innovation and challenging yourself with new ideas can lead to excitement, energy and emergence of new, this can be wealth if done correctly, or could lead to incompetence if managed poorly.
The idea is transformative. Wealth is adaptive and growing while poor is sick and tired. In essence, adding zest and life is wealth while being old and broken is poor.