Read Proverbs 22:22, 23 Verse 22 talks about the poor.  What two things does our verse say not to do about a poor person?  The first is pretty clear: We should not take advantage of a poor person just because he is poor.  The other thing that we should not do to a poor person is not quite as clear: the second half of verse 22 says that we should not "oppress the afflicted in the gate".  Let's look at these three words.  Oppress means to be mean to someone.  If we pester our sister, we are oppressing our sister.  If we talk our brother into doing our chores that we are supposed to do, we are oppressing our brother.  The next word is afflicted.  Afflicted means to do mean things to someone else.  When we oppress our sister, we are afflicting them.  It is like putting bothersome things on them.  It is like making them do more and more work.  Then the last word is a phrase.  A phrase is a group of words.  A preposition is a word, but a prepositional phrase is a group of words.  This phrase is in the gate.  Back in Bible times, there were no courthouses.  The place where all of the judgements between two people took place was at the city gate.  So the phrase in the gate actually means in court.  God tells us here in verse 22 that we should not drag a poor person into court.  The reason we shouldn't is that they don't have the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.  If they don't have a lawyer, we would be taking advantage of the poor person.  Now that we've seen three things that we should not do, verse 23 tells us two bad things that will happen to us if we ignore the warnings: First, it says that God will take up for the poor.  If God is on the side of the poor, and we go against the poor, We are going against God.  And that isn't very smart!  The the second part of verse 23 says that God will spoil those who spoil the poor.  That means that if we take advantage of the poor, God will take advantage of us!  If we bother the poor, God will bother us!  If we are kind to the poor, God will be kind to us.  If we are mean to the poor, God will punish us.  God takes up for the poor.