Proverbs 6
Three warnings in one chapter: against suretyship, against laziness, against the seven things the Lord hates — and then back to the adulteress.
Summary
The chapter opens with a practical warning against suretyship — pledging yourself financially for a neighbour or a stranger. The advice is pragmatic: if you have done this, go at once and free yourself; give your eyes no sleep, your eyelids no slumber; save yourself as a gazelle escaping from a hunter. The second warning is the most famous: the lazy man is sent to the ant for instruction. Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. Then the satirical address: how long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. The ant is the emblematic wisdom creature of the book — she does not need supervision because she has internalised the logic of the seasons.
The chapter pivots to a portrait of the worthless person: crooked speech, winking eyes, shuffling feet, pointing fingers — perpetually devising evil and sowing discord. Such a person will be broken without remedy. Then the seven things that are an abomination to the Lord: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. The list is a compressed catalogue of the violations of right social order that the book most consistently condemns. The chapter closes by returning to the adulteress, with a graphic warning: a man who commits adultery with his neighbour's wife destroys himself. Wounds and dishonour will he get, and his reproach will not be wiped away. The husband's jealousy will not spare in the day of vengeance.
- Proverbs 1Chapter 1 is the prologue and the first discourse.
- Proverbs 2Chapter 2 is the conditional discourse: a long, single grammatical sentence structured as if-then.
- Proverbs 3Chapter 3 contains two of the book's most famous passages and is the third of the opening discourses.
- Proverbs 4Chapter 4 contains three short discourses, the third and most urgent addressed directly to the heart.
- Proverbs 5Chapter 5 is the book's first long treatment of the strange woman, and it works by contrast: the appeal of the adulteress versus the satisfaction of one's own wife.
- Proverbs 6Chapter 6 is the most varied of the opening discourses, containing three distinct warnings before returning to the adulteress.
- Proverbs 7Chapter 7 is the book's most extended narrative set-piece: the father watches, from his window, as a young man without sense passes through the street near the corner where the adulteress lives, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night.
- Proverbs 8Chapter 8 is the theological centre of the book and one of the most consequential passages in the Hebrew Bible for later Jewish and Christian thought.
- Proverbs 9Chapter 9 is the structural climax of the opening discourses and the hinge of the whole book.
- Proverbs 10Chapter 10 opens the first major collection of two-line proverbs attributed to Solomon — the collection that runs through 22:16 and constitutes the heart of the book.
- Proverbs 11Chapter 11 continues the antithetical proverbs with a strong economic focus.
- Proverbs 12Chapter 12 is dense with observations on speech, diligence, and the acceptance of correction.
- Proverbs 13Chapter 13 ranges across the same terrain as the surrounding chapters — speech, discipline, wealth, hope — with several particularly sharp individual sayings.
- Proverbs 14Chapter 14 opens with a compressed domestic image — the wise woman builds her house, the foolish tears it down with her own hands — that anticipates the woman of valour in chapter 31.
- Proverbs 15Chapter 15 is the chapter of speech and divine omniscience.
- Proverbs 16Chapter 16 is the most theologically concentrated chapter in the Solomonic collection and contains several of the most quoted proverbs in the book.
- Proverbs 17Chapter 17 continues the antithetical collection with several of the most remembered individual proverbs in the book.
- Proverbs 18Chapter 18 gives the most extended treatment of the tongue in the collection and contains several proverbs with an unusually theological register.
- Proverbs 19Chapter 19 continues the Solomonic collection with a varied set of observations on wealth and poverty, family, the king, and divine sovereignty.
- Proverbs 20Chapter 20 opens with one of the book's most direct temperance observations — wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise — and ranges across royal authority, the limits of self-knowledge, and commercial ethics.
- Proverbs 21Chapter 21 opens with the divine-sovereignty cluster that runs through this part of the collection: the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.
- Proverbs 22Chapter 22 contains the final proverbs of the first Solomonic collection (verses 1-16) and then opens the Words of the Wise (verses 17-29), a new section closely related to the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope.
- Proverbs 23Chapter 23 continues the Words of the Wise with extended observations on several of the book's main topics.
- Proverbs 24Chapter 24 closes the Words of the Wise (verses 1-22) and then gives a short appendix (verses 23-34).
- Proverbs 25Chapter 25 opens the second Solomonic collection, with the distinctive superscription: these also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.
- Proverbs 26Chapter 26 is the most focused chapter in the book: the first twelve verses are a concentrated catalogue of fool proverbs, followed by seven proverbs on the sluggard, followed by proverbs on the contentious person and the flatterer.
- Proverbs 27Chapter 27 is among the richest chapters of the Hezekiah collection.
- Proverbs 28Chapter 28 opens with one of the book's most psychologically acute observations: the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
- Proverbs 29Chapter 29 closes the Hezekiah collection and contains several of the most quoted verses in the book.
- Proverbs 30Chapter 30 is the most distinctive chapter in the book.
- Proverbs 31Chapter 31 closes the book in two distinct sections.