This dissertation challenges prevailing views of wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor in the book of Proverbs. Most scholars agree that Proverbs presents conflicting guidance on these themes, reading everything in Proverbs that mentions wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor as though it is all mutually informing. This is understandable, because these are related themes. In this study, however, I argue against this perspective. I contend that most previous studies have inappropriately conflated the meaning of material that is pragmatically unrelated. The various materials in Proverbs mentioning these themes serve different pragmatic functions throughout the book. Wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor may be the focus of instructions, the central feature in motivations, or simply supporting features in instructions or motivations. Linguistic pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics inform the approach I develop to three pragmatic features in Proverbs-the communicative context, instruction, and motivation. Drawing from these fields, I develop a cognitive model of how readers are likely to interpret material in Proverbs broadly speaking in light of these features. I then apply this model to all the material in Proverbs that mentions wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor to demonstrate how readers are likely to interpret this material in particular. Thorough consideration of pragmatics and the influence of pragmatics on language processing (i.e., interpretation) enables analysts to disambiguate how wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor are portrayed (and used) throughout the book of Proverbs. In sum, when readers construe a directive pragmatic context, they are primed to imagine personal implications for themselves as they read. Further, when they imagine these personal implications, they are primed to simulate the meaning of material in Proverbs from participant viewpoints. It is ultimately the relations between readers and wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor within viewpointed reader simulations that undermine the conflations that many scholars perform. Because these conflations have typically led to perceived contradictions concerning wealth, poverty, the rich, and the poor in Proverbs, this project undermines the overall perspective that Proverbs presents conflicting guidance on these themes.