Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Proverbs 15:3 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 3. 3The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good”.
A soft answer turns wrath; grievous words light it
This verse is one part of that explanation in Proverbs 15:1–4. The complete section carries the connected meaning and how it should shape life.
Read It With
- Proverbs 15:1–4
Read Proverbs 15:3 with 15:1–4. Read alone, “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: uses contrastive parallelism to place “A soft answer turneth away wrath” against “grievous words stir up anger”; by 15:4, it uses contrastive parallelism to place “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life” against “perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit”. Together the unit concentrates on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, violence, predation, conflict, and protection, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 15:1–4 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.” Its lines concentrate on speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence, violence, predation, conflict, and protection, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good”.
What Remains True
Wisdom begins with reverent accountability to the LORD and refuses to make human insight self-sufficient. In Proverbs 15:3, that bounded truth is expressed through “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and…,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Bring the decision under truthful worship, moral accountability, and correction rather than using religious language to shield preference or power. Proverbs 15:3 names that responsibility through “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and…,” so the response must remain accountable to the person, action, comparison, or consequence in this line.
Continue in Context
Read the complete section for the connected explanation and how it should shape life. This verse is a doorway into that passage, not a saying that stands alone.
Read Proverbs 15:1–4 — Speech, listening, truth, and relational consequence — A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir…Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
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 15:1–4, 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 15:1-15:4
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. 1121-1125, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 15:1–4
Open source ↗