# Nine sayings everyone thinks are in the Bible > "God helps those who help themselves." "This too shall pass." "Spare the rod, spoil the child." People quote them as scripture all the time. Here is where each one really comes from, and what the nearest verse actually says. Text & Tradition · BibleBelt · https://biblebelt.app/articles/sayings-not-in-the-bible Somebody at the table says it with total confidence. "Like the Bible says, God helps those who help themselves." Everyone nods. It has the rhythm of scripture. It is not in there. Neither are a lot of the lines people have quoted as Bible verses their whole lives. Some come from an almanac, some from a hymn, one from a poem about book critics. A few are real verses that got trimmed along the way, and the real wording is often sharper than the version everyone knows. Here are nine. See how many you would have gotten right. ## The nine ### 1. "God helps those who help themselves" The most famous one of all. The wording people quote is Benjamin Franklin's, from *Poor Richard's Almanack* in 1736. Franklin did not invent the idea. Close versions appear in Algernon Sidney's writing on government from 1698, and earlier still in the moral of Aesop's fable "Hercules and the Waggoner." The line is nowhere in the Bible. If anything, a well-known proverb leans the other way. > Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. > (Proverbs 3:5) ### 2. "This too shall pass" It gets read at funerals and quoted from pulpits, and it is nowhere in the Bible. The line comes from a Persian fable, retold in English by the poet Edward FitzGerald in the 1800s. Abraham Lincoln then quoted it in a famous speech. The nearest verse opens a famous poem in Ecclesiastes. It says something different: every part of life has its time. > For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: > (Ecclesiastes 3:1) ### 3. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" Not scripture. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, used it in a sermon in the late 1700s, and even he quoted it as an old saying, not as a verse. The Bible does have many rules about ritual purity, but the neat English proverb belongs to Wesley's century. It is a good example of a sermon line graduating into "something the Bible says." ### 4. "The lion shall lie down with the lamb" This one is close, and that is the surprise. Here is the verse. > The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. > (Isaiah 11:6) A wolf with a lamb. A leopard with a young goat. A calf with a lion. The verse never pairs the lion with the lamb. The popular version smooths several animal pairs down into one easy couplet, and the paraphrase became more famous than the verse. ### 5. "God works in mysterious ways" A hymn, not a verse. The poet William Cowper wrote "God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform" in 1773, after a long stretch of deep personal darkness. Hymns have supplied a lot of what people think the Bible says, and this is one of the most quoted. ### 6. "Pride comes before a fall" The idea is in the Bible. The wording has been trimmed. > Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. > (Proverbs 16:18) The proverb is a matched pair: pride with destruction, a haughty spirit with a fall. The popular version keeps the start and the end and drops the middle. The meaning survives. The poetry does not. ### 7. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" The catchy wording comes from Samuel Butler's comic poem *Hudibras*, published in 1663. The Bible does carry the idea, in a proverb with a different shape. > Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them. > (Proverbs 13:24) The verse is real. The slogan is the poet's. A satirical poem gave the idea its stickiest form, and the Bible got the credit. ### 8. "To err is human, to forgive divine" It sounds like Paul. It is Alexander Pope, in *An Essay on Criticism*, a poem from 1711, and the couplet is about literary critics. The same poem gave the language "a little learning is a dangerous thing" and "fools rush in." Several sayings people file under the Bible trace back to one witty poem about book reviewing. ### 9. "Charity begins at home" An English proverb. Sir Thomas Browne put it in print in 1642. People sometimes connect it to a verse in 1 Timothy. > And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. > (1 Timothy 5:8) The verse is about supporting your own family. It never says that charity starts there. This is how a proverb becomes "biblical": someone finds a verse in the neighborhood, and the two fuse together. They point in similar directions, which is what makes the swap so hard to spot. ## And one that really is in there After nine sayings that are not quite in the Bible, here is the surprise in reverse. "A wolf in sheep's clothing" sounds like a fable, and Aesop does have a similar story. But the phrase people use comes from Jesus. > “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. > (Matthew 7:15) The image was around in the ancient world, and Matthew's Gospel puts it in Jesus' mouth. Both associations are fair: Aesop has the fable, and the Gospel has the line. One more belongs on any list like this: "Money is the root of all evil." That one is a real verse with words missing, and the missing words change its meaning. It has [its own article](/articles/exegesis-and-eisegesis), as an example of reading something into a verse. ## For further exploration Three things to try with the text open: 1. **Read Isaiah 11:6-9.** Count every animal pair. Then read Isaiah 65:25 and see which pairs Isaiah uses there. 2. **Read Proverbs 16:18 out loud,** then the short version. Notice what the second half of the verse adds. 3. **Pick a saying you have always assumed was a verse.** Search for its exact words in a Bible. If you cannot find it, look for who said it first. ## Sources - Proverbs 3:5, 13:24, 16:18; Ecclesiastes 3:1; Isaiah 11:6; 1 Timothy 5:8; Matthew 7:15 (NRSVue) - *The New Oxford Annotated Bible*, notes on Isaiah 11 and Proverbs 16 - Benjamin Franklin, *Poor Richard's Almanack* (1736); Algernon Sidney, *Discourses Concerning Government* (1698); Aesop, "Hercules and the Waggoner" - John Wesley, Sermon 88, "On Dress" - William Cowper, "Light Shining out of Darkness," in *Olney Hymns* - Samuel Butler, *Hudibras*, Part II (1663) - Alexander Pope, *An Essay on Criticism* (1711) - Sir Thomas Browne, *Religio Medici* (1642) - *The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs* and *The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations*, on the history of these sayings --- _From [BibleBelt](https://biblebelt.app/), the app that teaches what historians and scholars know about the Bible. The questions behind this article, with the verse and the source on every answer, are in the app. This page's canonical form is https://biblebelt.app/articles/sayings-not-in-the-bible._