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Proverbs 17:17–21, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 17:17–21
Friendship, neighbor-love, loyalty, and boundaries — A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for…
A friend loves at all times; a brother is born for adversity; striking hands as surety is another kind of friendship-failure
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. A person who lacks sense strikes hands and becomes surety in a friend's presence. Love that only works in calm is not this friendship. Adversity is where brotherhood shows. Surety here is an unexamined pledge that can sink both parties. The warning is against rash liability, not against standing with a friend who is actually in need.
Loving a fight is loving transgression; a raised gate can be a wish for collapse; a perverse tongue finds trouble; a fool-child grieves a father
Whoever loves transgression loves strife; whoever exalts a gate seeks destruction. A froward heart finds no good; a perverse tongue falls into mischief. Whoever begets a fool does it to sorrow; the father of a fool has no joy. High gates are status architecture. Wanting the look of invulnerability can be how ruin is scheduled. A twisted tongue does not merely comment on mischief; it trips into it. Parental grief over a fool is real; it is not a warrant to disown, to harm, or to treat every struggling child as this fool.
How this should shape us
Be the friend who still loves when the day is bad. Do not sign a pledge that will take your neighbor's bed and yours. Stop loving the fight. Lower the gate that is only there to impress, and do not use a father's sorrow as a script for cruelty.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 17:17–21 in your own words. Identify its form and collection, trace one line from role through contextual meaning and enduring truth to application, name one uncertainty, and reject one misuse explicitly.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Research trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Proverbs 17:17–21, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 17:17-17:21
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1129-1132, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 17:17–21
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 17:17–21 and the First Solomonic sentence-saying collection outline
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 17:17–21
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
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 17:17–21, 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 17:17-17:21
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. 1129-1132, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 17:17–21
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Proverbs
K. T. Aitken
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Exact location: Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 17:17–21 and the First Solomonic sentence-saying collection outline
Open source ↗scholarly monograph chapter abstract and metadata
Context in the Sayings Collections
Stuart Weeks
Oxford University Press, in Early Israelite Wisdom, 2000
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Exact location: Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 17:17–21
Open source ↗