Scripture Daily

Context No. 311 of 4322 · Proverbs

Context · Reflection

Proverbs 6:1-16: in context

1My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger, 2you are trapped by the words of your mouth; you are ensnared with the words of your mouth. 3Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself, since you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor. 4Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. 5Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler. 6Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways, and be wise; 7which having no chief, overseer, or ruler, 8provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. 9How long will you sleep, sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep? 10A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep— 11so your poverty will come as a robber, and your scarcity as an armed man. 12A worthless person, a man of iniquity, is he who walks with a perverse mouth, 13who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who motions with his fingers, 14in whose heart is perverseness, who devises evil continually, who always sows discord. 15Therefore his calamity will come suddenly. He will be broken suddenly, and that without remedy. 16There are six things which the LORD hates; yes, seven which are an abomination to him:

This passage stacks three quick warnings, and at first they seem unrelated: a warning about co-signing a loan, a lecture to a lazy man, and a portrait of a troublemaker. But look at how each one ends, and a single thread runs through all three. Each describes a person walking, by small steps, into a sudden ruin they set up themselves.

The first is about giving your word as security for someone else's debt. If you have done it, the father says, you are snared by the words of your own mouth, so treat it as an emergency, give your eyes no sleep, go humble yourself and get free before the trap closes. The second is the famous one. Go to the ant, you sluggard, and learn from a creature that stores up food in summer with no boss standing over her. How long will you lie there? And then the deadly little rhythm: a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty comes on you like a robber, scarcity like an armed man. The third is the troublemaker who winks and signals and sows discord, whose calamity, the passage says, will come suddenly, broken beyond remedy. In each case the collapse arrives all at once, but it was assembled quietly, out of small, harmless-looking allowances.

That is the warning worth keeping. Ruin rarely announces itself; it accumulates in littles, a rash word, one more hour of sleep, a small habit of stirring up trouble, and then arrives suddenly, like a robber at the door. What little thing do I keep telling myself is harmless, a little slack here, a little sleep there, that is quietly walking me toward a reckoning that will feel sudden only to me?

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