Verse Lens · Context pointer
Proverbs 17:4 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 4. 4A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Role in This Section
This verse uses two-part parallelism to place “A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips” beside “and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 17:1–4
Read Proverbs 17:4 with 17:1–4. Read alone, “A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear…” 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 “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife”; by 17:4, it uses two-part parallelism to place “A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips” beside “and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue”. Together the unit concentrates on family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care, violence, predation, conflict, and protection, wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why It Needs Context
This context pointer uses two-part parallelism to place “A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips” beside “and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue”. Read Proverbs 17:1–4 before assigning independent truth or application to Proverbs 17:4.
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 17:1–4 — Family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care — Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an…Sources 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 17:1–4, 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 17:1-17:4
Open source ↗