The day of wrath - Words true in their highest sense of the great "diesirae" of the future, but spoken in the first instance (compare Zephaniah 1:15-18) of any "day of the Lord," any time of judgment, when men or nations receive the chastisement of their sins. At such a time "riches profit not."

Riches profit not in the day of wrath - Among men they can do all things; but they cannot purchase the remission of sins, nor turn aside the wrath of God when that is poured out upon the opulent transgressor.

Riches profit not in the day of wrath,.... When God takes away the soul, and summons to judgment, and brings to it; and as riches profited not Rome Pagan, in the day of the Lamb's wrath upon it; so neither will they profit Rome Papal, when it will come in remembrance before God, to give it the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath; see Revelation 6:15;
but righteousness delivereth from death; from the curse of a corporeal death; from the power of a spiritual one; and from dying the second or an eternal one; See Gill on Proverbs 10:2; the Targum is,
"from an evil death.''

Riches will stand men in no stead in the day of death.

(Compare Proverbs 10:2).
wrath--that is, of God.

Three proverbs in praise of צדקה:
4 Possessions are of no profit in the day of wrath;
But righteousness delivereth from death.
That which is new here, is only that possessions and goods (vid., regarding הון, p. 63) are destitute of all value in the day of the μέλλουσα ὀργή; for יום עברה, the day of wrath breaking through the limits (of long-suffering), has the same meaning as in the prophets; and such prophetic words as Isaiah 10:3; Zephaniah 1:18, and, almost in the same words, Ezekiel 7:19, are altogether similar to this proverb. The lxx, which translates ἐν ήμέρᾳ ἐπαγωγῆς, harmonizes in expression with Sir. 5:8, cf. 2:2. Theodotion translates איד, Proverbs 27:10, by ἐπαγωγή (providence, fate).