Home

For Teaching

Proverbs 20: What the Passage Says

65 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Proverbs 20 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter is a collection of separate sayings on daily conduct: drink, dealing with a king, laziness, honest scales, careless speech, rash vows, and the wish to get even. Several sayings turn on the LORD: he made the eye and the ear, he hates crooked weights, he directs a man's steps, and his lamp searches a person's inmost self. Others describe what a king does when he judges, and what keeps a king's rule steady.

Claim by Claim

  1. 20:1
    • Wine is a mocker.
    • Strong drink is a brawler that rages.
    • Anyone who is led astray by it is not wise.
  2. 20:2
    • The terror a king inspires is like the roar of a lion.
    • Whoever provokes a king to anger sins against his own life.
  3. 20:3
    • It is an honor for a man to keep away from strife.
    • Every fool breaks out in quarreling.
  4. 20:4
    • The sluggard does not plow because of the winter cold.
    • At harvest time he asks for something and there is nothing.
  5. 20:5
    • Counsel in a man's heart is like deep water.
    • A man of understanding draws that counsel out.
  6. 20:6
    • Many a man proclaims his own loyal kindness.
    • A faithful man is asked after as one hard to find.
  7. 20:7
    • The righteous man walks in his integrity.
    • His children after him are blessed.
  8. 20:8
    • A king sits on the throne of judgment.
    • Such a king winnows out all evil with his eyes.
  9. 20:9
    • No one can say, I have made my heart clean.
    • No one can say, I am pure from my sin.
  10. 20:10
    • Two different weights are used in trade.
    • Two different measures are used in trade.
    • Both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.
  11. 20:11
    • Even a boy is known by his deeds.
    • It is known by his deeds whether his conduct is pure.
    • It is known by his deeds whether his conduct is upright.
  12. 20:12
    • There is an ear that hears.
    • There is an eye that sees.
    • The LORD made both of them.
  13. 20:13
    • Do not love sleep, or you will become poor.
    • Open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.
  14. 20:14
    • The buyer says, It is bad, it is bad.
    • When the buyer has gone away, he boasts.
  15. 20:15
    • There is gold and an abundance of corals.
    • Lips of knowledge are a precious vessel.
  16. 20:16
    • Take the garment of a man who has put up security for a stranger.
    • Hold him in pledge on account of a foreigner; the text is ambiguous whether this is foreigners in general or a foreign woman.
  17. 20:17
    • Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man.
    • Afterward his mouth is filled with gravel.
  18. 20:18
    • Plans are established by counsel.
    • Wage war with wise guidance.
  19. 20:19
    • One who goes about as a talebearer reveals secrets.
    • Do not associate with a man who opens his lips wide in flattery.
  20. 20:20
    • Whoever curses his father or his mother will have his lamp put out.
    • That lamp will be put out in deepest darkness.
  21. 20:21
    • An inheritance can be gotten hastily at the beginning.
    • The end of such an inheritance will not be blessed.
  22. 20:22
    • Do not say, I will repay evil.
    • Wait for the LORD.
    • The LORD will save you.
  23. 20:23
    • Two different weights are an abomination to the LORD.
    • Deceitful scales are not good.
  24. 20:24
    • A man's steps are from the LORD.
    • A man cannot understand his own way.
  25. 20:25
    • It is a snare for a man to say rashly of something that it is holy; the verb is ambiguous between speaking rashly and devouring what is holy.
    • It is a snare to make inquiry only after the vows are made.
  26. 20:26
    • A wise king winnows out the wicked.
    • He brings the wheel over them.
  27. 20:27
    • The breath of a man is the lamp of the LORD.
    • That lamp searches all the inner chambers of the belly.
  28. 20:28
    • Loyal love and truth preserve a king.
    • His throne is upheld by loyal love.
  29. 20:29
    • The glory of young men is their strength.
    • The splendor of old men is gray hair.
  30. 20:30
    • Bruising wounds scour away evil.
    • Blows cleanse the inner chambers of the belly.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1
"Strong drink" translates Hebrew *shekar*, a fermented drink made from grain, dates or other fruit rather than grapes. Distilled spirits did not exist; the contrast is between grape wine and other kinds of alcohol, not between weak and hard liquor.
20:2
A king had almost total power. He could jail or even kill a person who angered him, and there was no higher court to appeal to.
20:3
In the King James, "meddling" does not mean being nosy. Here it means jumping into a fight or picking one.
20:4
Plowing in ancient Israel was done in the autumn and early winter, after the first rains had softened ground baked hard through the dry summer. The cold season was exactly when the work had to be done, so the excuse costs him the whole year's crop.
20:5
The image behind the verse is a well: the plans lie deep, and the person of understanding lowers a bucket and hauls them up. Same word used of drawing water.
20:6
"Goodness" here is Hebrew *hesed*, the steady loyalty owed to family, friends and allies, the kind you can count on. The proverb turns on the gap between advertising that quality and actually having it.
20:8
Kings in the ancient Near East were the highest court, hearing cases in person. The verb translated "sifts out" is a farming word for winnowing, tossing threshed grain into the air so the wind carries the chaff away. Compare the threshing image in verse 26.
20:9
Sin means the wrong things a person does.
20:10
Literally "a stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah." Merchants weighed silver against stone weights and measured grain with a dry measure called an ephah. A cheat carried two sets: heavy stones for buying, light ones for selling.
20:11
The word for "child" (*na'ar*) covers anyone from a young boy to a man not yet fully established: it is not restricted to small children.
20:13
In the King James, "bread" usually means food of any kind, not just loaves.
20:14
Haggling was normal in the marketplace: the buyer runs down the goods to drive the price down, then walks off pleased with the bargain he talked his way into.
20:15
"Rubies" is a guess at a Hebrew word (*peninim*) whose meaning is uncertain; it may mean red coral or pearls. The point is simply that it was among the most costly things known.
20:16
The garment is the outer cloak, the standard item taken as security on a loan, the law required it be handed back each night because a poor man slept in it. The proverb's advice is: someone reckless enough to guarantee a stranger's debt is a bad credit risk, so take the pledge. The Hebrew has two readings here, one meaning "foreigners" (plural) and one "a foreign woman"; the King James follows the second.
20:17
Bread was ground on stone querns, and grit from the stones regularly ended up in the loaf, a familiar, teeth-cracking unpleasantness. Sweet in the mouth at first, gravel at the end.
20:18
The word rendered "guidance" comes from the ropes used to steer a ship; it means skilled direction from someone who knows how to handle the thing.
20:19
The last phrase is literally "one who opens his lips wide", a man who cannot keep his mouth shut. Older translations read it as flattery; either way the advice is to keep clear of him.
20:20
"Curse" means to call down harm on someone, not bad language; cursing a parent was a capital offense under Israelite law. The lamp is the small household oil lamp kept burning through the night, putting it out stands for a life and a family line coming to an end.
20:21
The picture is of an inheritance seized ahead of time (extracted early from a living parent, or taken at the expense of the other heirs), rather than received in due course. Some Hebrew manuscripts read "gotten greedily" instead of "hastily."
20:22
Payback for injury was a matter for the courts and, in some cases, for a designated family avenger; the proverb tells the private individual to step out of that role, not to deny that the wrong was real.
20:23
A balance scale had two pans hanging from a beam. A dishonest seller could tip the beam or shave the weights so the scale told a lie.
20:25
Something "set apart as holy" was handed over to the sanctuary, an animal, produce, silver, sometimes a person's own service. Such vows were binding and expensive to buy back, so a rash promise was a trap the man had built himself.
20:26
A threshing sledge was a heavy board or wheeled cart dragged over spread-out grain by oxen to break the husks off. The king separates out the guilty the way a farmer separates grain from chaff, then runs the sledge over them.
20:27
"Candle" in 1611 English meant any small light; here it is an oil lamp. "Inward parts of the belly" is a Hebrew way of saying the innermost, hidden self, the ancients located thought and feeling in the organs of the torso, where we would say the mind or the heart.
20:28
"Mercy and truth" translates a fixed Hebrew pair, *hesed we'emet*, steady loyalty and dependability. It is the language of keeping faith with the people you are bound to, not of feeling kindly toward them.
20:29
Gray hair marked a man who had survived to old age in a society where that was uncommon, and it carried real standing: the elders who judged disputes at the town gate were literally the old men.
20:30
"Blueness" is the dark bruise raised by a blow. The verse describes physical punishment, and the Hebrew is difficult: it can be read as a statement that beatings scour out wrongdoing, or as an observation about how such punishment was thought to work. "Inward parts of the belly" again means the innermost self.

Read Proverbs 20