There is a, “secret sauce,” to operating a long term profitable business. This passage gives you the recipe: an Exposé on Proverbs 13:11

”Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: But he that gathereth by labour shall increase.“

Proverbs 13:11 

As stated in previous notes, It is important to grasp the ideas of wealth and poverty literally mean to have enough or to not have enough. Excess is not involved in the equation most of the time. 

This leads to an interesting perspective taken up in this passage. A paraphrase of it says, “To have enough that was gained by doing nothing leads to a loss: But to assemble or gather by controlling (as in holding on to with your hand) leads to growth.”

Allow me to contrast the ideas of vanity and labor presented in the verse. The word Vanity carries the idea of a breath as in an exhale. Think of the uselessness of exhaled air. The oxygen has depleted to the point where inhaling the same air back in would cause suffocation because there is no use left in that air for you. It can be recycled by the environment and then will be useful to you again. 

In contrast the word labor illuminates the idea of a hand. It is useful. It grabs, holds, improves, controls, crafts, directs and more. It is a representation of a tree coming up from the ground and possessing the sky; or perhaps the tree is a representation of the earth having a hand reaching up and grasping the sky, holding it close. 

The ideas these two words convey leave the interpretation to the riddle exposed. If you have gained control of resources but have no way to repeat the process or to control the resource it will come in and go out like a breath of air; it will be diminished. In contrast, if you create wealth on purpose using a system of control, you can steer wealth or drive toward it. The wealth will increase because it will take the use of a resource and collect more resources.

This process of utilizing resources to secure new resources is fundamental in the understanding of finances. A huge sum may be deposited but if it is not controlled or steered by the hand into usefulness it will be expelled like air and will be useless to the previous user.