Proverbs 19:15 Explained in Context

Read It With

• Proverbs 19:13–16

Read Proverbs 19:15 with 19:13–16. Read alone, “Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall…” 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 uses two-part parallelism to place “Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep” beside “and an idle soul shall suffer hunger”.