Verse Lens · Concise explanation

Proverbs 19:13 Explained in Context

Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.

Selected verse

Verse 13. A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.

King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions

Quick Meaning

This verse opens with “A foolish son is the calamity of his father” and develops the line through “and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping”.

Read It With

  • Proverbs 19:13–16

Read Proverbs 19:13 with 19:13–16. Read alone, “A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: opens with “A foolish son is the calamity of his father” and develops the line through “and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping”; by 19:16, it uses contrastive parallelism to place “He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul” against “he that despiseth his ways shall die”. Together the unit concentrates on family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care, gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency, reverent accountability before the LORD within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”

Why This Verse Appears Here

Proverbs 19:13–16 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.” Its lines concentrate on family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care, gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency, reverent accountability before the LORD, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse opens with “A foolish son is the calamity of his father” and develops the line through “and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping”.

What Remains True

Family relationships can transmit wisdom and responsibility, but their authority remains accountable to truth, safety, and justice. In Proverbs 19:13, that bounded truth is expressed through “A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the…,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.

How It Can Shape Life

  • Practice mutual listening, clear expectations, dependable care, and boundaries that protect every member's dignity and safety. Proverbs 19:13 names that responsibility through “A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the…,” so the response must remain accountable to the person, action, comparison, or consequence in this line.

Continue in Context

The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.

Read Proverbs 19:13–16 — Family teaching, responsibility, and mutual care — A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the…
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 19:13–16, 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 19:13-19:16

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. 1136-1140, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 19:13–16

Open source ↗
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