Proverbs 18:10

The next verse is the key to this one, and it is deliberately parallel.

Here: Yahweh's name is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe. There: the rich man's wealth is his strong city, and like a high wall in his own imagination. Same architecture, same vocabulary — one real, one imagined. Proverbs is not contrasting God with nothing. It is contrasting two towers, both of which feel solid from inside.

That is the sharper observation. Money genuinely does function as a fortification. It absorbs shocks, buys time, keeps some troubles at a distance. The proverb does not deny this; it says the wall is high in his own imagination, which is precisely where a wall is hardest to test.

And the name is what you run to. Not the temple, not a ritual, not a place you have to reach. In Hebrew a name is character, and character is portable — available at three in the morning, in a foreign country, with nothing in your hands.

Run is the verb, and it implies both speed and prior knowledge. Nobody runs somewhere they have not already identified. You do not work out where the tower is while being chased. The running happens fast because the location was settled long before, on some ordinary afternoon when nothing was wrong.