What does Proverbs Chapter 6 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Opening comparisons and commands retain the chapter’s wording. The speaker’s examples and future assertions remain attributed. Closing sayings are preserved without added events or universal guarantees.

Chapter breakdown

Proverbs 6 presents documents on several heads. If the son is surety for a friend and has engaged hand to a stranger, his own words ensnare him. Deliver yourself: run about, hasten and stir the friend, without eye sleep or eyelid slumber; escape like a doe from hand and bird from fowler. Loan size, enslavement and a particular contract are not described.

The sluggard is sent to consider the ant, without guide, master or captain, providing summer meat and gathering harvest food. Questions challenge continued sleeping and folded hands: want shall come like a traveller and poverty like an armed man; if diligent, harvest shall come like a fountain and want flee. Traveller and armed man are not merged into a bandit.

An apostate, unprofitable man uses perverse mouth, eye wink, foot pressure and finger speech, devising evil and sowing discord; sudden destruction shall come without remedy. Six things the Lord hates and the seventh detests are haughty eyes, lying tongue, innocent-blood hands, plotting heart, mischief-running feet, deceitful witness and discord among brethren.

Keep father’s commands and mother’s law, bound continually in heart and around neck; let them accompany walking, keep sleeping and speak upon waking. Commandment is lamp, law light and reproof life’s way, guarding against evil woman and stranger’s flattery. Do not covet beauty or be caught with winks. A harlot costs scarcely a loaf, but the woman catches a precious soul. Fire in bosom and walking coals pose burn questions; entering a neighbor’s wife shall not leave the toucher clean.

Theft to fill hunger is called a lesser fault. A separate edition annotation compares theft with adultery, says theft’s damage is more easily repaired and still calls theft mortal sin forbidden by a commandment; it does not say adultery can never be repaired. If taken, the thief shall restore sevenfold and give all household substance. The adulterer shall destroy his soul, gather shame and lasting reproach; the husband’s jealousy and rage will not spare in revenge or accept prayers or gifts. Future and conditional assertions remain distinct from witnessed outcomes.

The story inside

Opening: Opening comparisons and commands retain the chapter’s wording. Development: The speaker’s examples and future assertions remain attributed. Conclusion: Closing sayings are preserved without added events or universal guarantees.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Opening comparisons and commands retain the chapter’s wording.
2
The speaker’s examples and future assertions remain attributed.
3
Closing sayings are preserved without added events or universal guarantees.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 67650–67656
6:6. Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways, and learn wisdom: 6:7. Which, although she hath no guide, nor master, nor captain, 6:8. Provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
Lines 67680–67689
6:16. Six things there are, which the Lord hateth, and the seventh his soul detesteth: 6:17. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 6:18. A heart that deviseth wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief, 6:19. A deceitful witness that uttereth lies, and him that soweth discord among brethren.
Lines 67720–67725
The fault is not so great, etc.... The sin of theft is not so great, as to be compared with adultery: especially when a person pressed with hunger (which is the case here spoken of) steals to satisfy nature. Moreover the damage done by theft may much more easily be repaired, than the wrong done by adultery. But this does not hinder, but that theft also is a mortal sin, forbidden by one of the ten commandments.