Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Proverbs 13:20 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 20. 20He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” against “a companion of fools shall be destroyed”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 13:20–23
Proverbs 13:20 belongs to “Justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation — He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a....” It uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” against “a companion of fools shall be destroyed”. Read the adjacent sayings and the collection heading before moving from observation to application.
Why This Verse Appears Here
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” against “a companion of fools shall be destroyed”. This contributes necessary evidence to “Justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation — He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a...,” where justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation, wealth, poverty, provision, and economic power, friendship, neighbor-love, loyalty, and boundaries are read together without erasing the sentence saying's own force.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of...”
In plain language: friendship, neighbor-love, loyalty, and boundaries
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” against “a companion of fools shall be destroyed”.
Why it matters: This wording gives the verse its distinct role inside the cluster.
How certain? strongWhat Remains True
Wise relationships join loyal presence and honest counsel with boundaries that refuse exploitation. In Proverbs 13:20, that bounded truth is expressed through “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of...,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Show up consistently, speak difficult truth with care, receive correction, and protect the relationship from secrecy, flattery, and enabling harm. For Proverbs 13:20, preserve the sequence: verse role (uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” against “a companion of fools shall be destroyed”) -> contextual meaning in Proverbs 13:20–23 -> proportionate truth -> this accountable response.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 13:20–23 — Justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation — He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a...Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? strong
Where care is needed
This sentence saying states a context-shaped moral pattern. Its small-cluster boundary and degree of generality remain reviewable; exceptional outcomes do not make the observation meaningless or turn it into a guarantee.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Exact location: Proverbs 13:20–23, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Proverbs
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 13:20-13:23
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Proverbs with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
Exact location: NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1115-1118, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 13:20–23
Open source ↗