Proverbs 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter gathers four warnings a father gives his son. First, get free fast if you have promised to cover another person's debt. Then, learn from the ant instead of staying lazy, and watch out for the troublemaker who signals with his eyes and feet and stirs up fights, followed by a list of seven things the LORD hates. The rest of the chapter warns against sleeping with another man's wife and describes what it costs the man who does it.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • The speaker addresses his son.
   • The speaker sets a condition: that the son has become surety for his neighbor.
   • The speaker sets a condition: that the son has struck hands in pledge for a stranger.
2. 6:2
   • The son has been snared by the words of his own mouth.
   • The son has been caught by the words of his own mouth.
3. 6:3
   • The speaker tells his son to do this thing and rescue himself.
   • The reason given is that the son has come into his neighbor's hand.
   • The speaker tells his son to go and humble himself.
   • The speaker tells his son to press his plea urgently with his neighbor.
4. 6:4
   • The son is told to give no sleep to his eyes.
   • The son is told to give no slumber to his eyelids.
5. 6:5
   • The son is told to rescue himself like a gazelle from the hand.
   • The son is told to rescue himself like a bird from the hand of the fowler.
6. 6:6
   • The speaker tells the sluggard to go to the ant.
   • The speaker tells the sluggard to look at the ant's ways.
   • The speaker tells the sluggard to become wise.
7. 6:7
   • The ant has no chief.
   • The ant has no officer.
   • The ant has no ruler.
8. 6:8
   • The ant prepares her food in the summer.
   • The ant gathers her provisions at harvest.
9. 6:9
   • The speaker asks the sluggard how long he will lie down.
   • The speaker asks the sluggard when he will rise from his sleep.
10. 6:10
    • A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to lie down.
11. 6:11
    • Poverty will come upon the sluggard like a vagabond.
    • Want will come upon the sluggard like an armed man.
12. 6:12
    • A worthless person is a man of iniquity.
    • Such a man goes about with a crooked mouth.
13. 6:13
    • He winks with his eyes.
    • He shuffles or signals with his feet.
    • He points with his fingers.
14. 6:14
    • Perversity is in his heart.
    • He devises evil continually.
    • He sends out discord.
15. 6:15
    • Therefore his calamity will come suddenly.
    • He will be broken in an instant.
    • There will be no healing for him.
16. 6:16
    • There are six things the LORD hates.
    • Seven things are an abomination to him.
17. 6:17
    • Haughty eyes are among them.
    • A lying tongue is among them.
    • Hands that shed innocent blood are among them.
18. 6:18
    • A heart that devises wicked plans is among them.
    • Feet that hurry to run to evil are among them.
19. 6:19
    • A false witness who breathes out lies is among them.
    • One who sends discord among brothers is among them.
20. 6:20
    • The speaker tells his son to keep his father's commandment.
    • The speaker tells his son not to forsake his mother's teaching.
21. 6:21
    • The son is told to bind them on his heart continually.
    • The son is told to tie them around his throat.
22. 6:22
    • When the son walks, it will lead him.
    • When the son lies down, it will watch over him.
    • When the son wakes, it will speak with him.
23. 6:23
    • The commandment is a lamp.
    • The teaching is light.
    • Reproofs of discipline are the way of life.
24. 6:24
    • Their purpose is to keep the son from the evil woman.
    • Their purpose is to keep the son from the smooth tongue of the foreign woman.
25. 6:25
    • The son is told not to desire her beauty in his heart.
    • The son is told not to let her capture him with her eyelids.
26. 6:26
    • On account of a prostitute a man is reduced to a loaf of bread.
    • A married woman hunts the precious life.
    • The Hebrew is ambiguous as to whether the prostitute's price is a loaf of bread or the man is brought down to his last loaf of bread.
27. 6:27
    • The question is asked whether a man can carry fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned.
28. 6:28
    • The question is asked whether a man can walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched.
29. 6:29
    • So it is with the man who goes in to his neighbor's wife.
    • No one who touches her will go unpunished.
30. 6:30
    • People do not despise a thief who steals to fill himself when he is hungry.
    • The Hebrew is ambiguous as to whether this is a statement or a rhetorical question expecting the answer that they do despise him.
31. 6:31
    • If the thief is found, he must repay sevenfold.
    • He must give all the wealth of his house.
32. 6:32
    • Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks sense.
    • The one who does it destroys his own life.
33. 6:33
    • He will find wounding and dishonor.
    • His reproach will not be wiped away.
34. 6:34
    • Jealousy is the fury of a husband.
    • He will not spare in the day of vengeance.
35. 6:35
    • He will not accept any ransom.
    • He will not consent, though you multiply the bribe.

Words Worth Explaining

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

6:1

Striking or shaking hands was the formal gesture that sealed a legal guarantee, like signing a contract today. To be "surety" was to make yourself personally liable for someone else's debt: if the borrower defaulted, the creditor could seize the guarantor's property, and in the ancient Near East could seize the guarantor himself or his children as debt slaves. The warning is about a real and ruinous financial risk, not about unfriendliness. KJV "friend" here translates a word meaning neighbor, associate, the other party, not necessarily someone close to you.

6:2

"Snared" and "taken" both mean caught. The picture is an animal caught in a trap it walked into.

6:3

The Hebrew verb behind "humble thyself" is uncertain; it may mean to prostrate yourself, or to stamp about, or to make yourself a doormat. "Make sure thy friend" means to press, badger, or importune the other party, to keep pushing until he releases you from the pledge.

6:4

"Slumber" means light sleep, like a short nap. The verse says do not even rest until this is fixed.

6:5

The KJV's "roe" is a gazelle, a small swift antelope, not the European roe deer. A "fowler" is a bird catcher, who worked with nets, snares and limed twigs rather than a weapon.

6:6

A "sluggard" is a person who will not work. The word comes from slug, the slow crawling animal.

6:8

In 1611 "meat" meant food of any kind, not just animal meat. Bread and grain counted as meat.

6:11

The KJV's "one that travelleth" renders a word for someone who roams or prowls, a vagrant or highwayman. "An armed man" is literally "a man of a shield." The picture is of poverty arriving like a mugger on the road: sudden, and not something you can argue with.

6:12

"Naughty person" in 1611 English meant a thoroughly bad or worthless man, far stronger than the modern word. The Hebrew is literally "a man of belial," an idiom for a good-for-nothing or a scoundrel. "Froward" is old English for crooked or twisted.

6:13

Winking, scuffing signals with the feet, and pointing with the fingers were recognized gestures of secret communication and covert mockery, the body language of a man running a scam or signaling to an accomplice while his mouth says something else.

6:14

"Soweth discord" is a farming picture. He plants fights the way a farmer plants seed, then waits for them to grow.

6:15

"Calamity" means very big trouble. "Without remedy" means there is no way left to fix it.

6:16

"Six things... yea, seven" is a standard Hebrew way of building a list, not a correction or a miscount. The pattern of naming one number and then the next builds suspense and throws the weight onto the final item, here, the one who stirs up conflict among kinsmen. "Abomination" translates a word for something ritually or morally revolting, the reaction of physical disgust.

6:17

The list that follows runs through the parts of the body (eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet, and then the mouth of a false witness) as a way of covering the whole person. "A proud look" is literally "haughty eyes," the raised, looking-down-on-you gaze.

6:18

In 1611 "imaginations" meant plans and schemes, not daydreams. This heart is working out exactly how to do harm.

6:19

Israelite trials had no police, forensic evidence or public prosecutor; cases were decided at the town gate on the word of witnesses. A witness who lied could therefore get an innocent person executed, and the law prescribed that the false witness suffer whatever penalty he had tried to bring on the accused.

6:20

"Law" here does not mean rules from a judge. The Hebrew word is torah, which means teaching, the kind a parent gives a child at home.

6:21

Binding words on the heart and tying them around the neck draws on two familiar images: a valuable ornament or amulet worn where everyone can see it, and the practice of physically fastening written words to the body as a reminder. The point is constant possession, not decoration.

6:23

A lamp was a small clay dish of olive oil with a burning wick. It gave just enough light for the next few steps in the dark. "Reproofs of instruction" means being corrected while you are being taught.

6:24

The KJV's "strange woman" does not mean odd or unknown. The Hebrew means a woman outside the bounds, outside your own marriage, and in this chapter specifically another man's wife, as verse 29 makes explicit.

6:25

Women lined their eyes with dark paint, so a single glance really stood out. "Take thee with her eyelids" means catching a man with one look, the way a trap catches an animal.

6:26

This verse is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew and has been read two ways: that the fee of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread, while an adulteress costs a man his life; or that a prostitute reduces a man to his last loaf. The contrast in either reading is between a cheap transaction and a fatal one.

6:27

"Bosom" means your chest, inside the front of your clothes. People carried things folded there, held against them.

6:29

"Goeth in to" is a standard Hebrew euphemism for sexual intercourse. Under Israelite law adultery was a capital offense for both parties, which is why the following verses treat it as unfixable in a way that theft is not.

6:31

Israelite law required a thief to repay double, or four- or fivefold for a slaughtered ox or sheep; "sevenfold" here is not a legal figure but the language of complete, ruinous repayment. A thief who could not pay could be sold to cover the debt. The point of the comparison is that even the worst outcome for a thief is a payment, a settled, closed account.

6:32

Adultery is when a married person sleeps with someone who is not their husband or wife. In Israel it broke a family and broke the law at the same time.

6:33

"A wound" likely means literal beating, the physical retaliation of the wronged husband and his family. "Reproach" is public disgrace: a permanent loss of standing in a small community where reputation was a man's working capital.

6:34

Jealousy is the hot, hurt anger you feel when someone takes what is yours. "Vengeance" means paying a person back for the wrong he did.

6:35

"Ransom" translates a legal term for a payment accepted in place of a penalty, money that bought a guilty man out of the punishment he was owed. Israelite law allowed such a payment in some cases, but not for offenses against a marriage; and here the wronged husband, who would be the one to accept it, will not.