Verse Lens · Context pointer
Proverbs 17:14 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 14. 14The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water: therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Role in This Section
This verse opens with “The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water” and develops the line through “therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 17:13–16
Read Proverbs 17:14 with 17:13–16. Read alone, “The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water:…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: contributes the claim, image, or instruction “Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house”; by 17:16, it contributes the claim, image, or instruction “Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?”. Together the unit concentrates on family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care, violence, predation, conflict, and protection, reverent accountability before the LORD within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why It Needs Context
This context pointer opens with “The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water” and develops the line through “therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with”. Read Proverbs 17:13–16 before assigning independent truth or application to Proverbs 17:14.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 17:13–16 — Evil returned for good, escalating strife, and distorted judgmentSources used for this context pointer
How certain is this explanation? strong
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 17:13–16, 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 17:13-17:16
Open source ↗