Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Proverbs 20:3 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 3. 3It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife” against “every fool will be meddling”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 20:1–4
The line at Proverbs 20:3 uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife” against “every fool will be meddling”. Its place in Proverbs 20:1–4 matters because the edited collection joins it to wisdom, folly, teachability, and moral perception, violence, predation, conflict, and protection, appetite, intoxication, desire, and self-government.
Why This Verse Appears Here
This line follows the unit's earlier saying and prepares its later turn; it uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife” against “every fool will be meddling”. Its value is contextual rather than slogan-like.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool...”
In plain language: violence, predation, conflict, and protection
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife” against “every fool will be meddling”.
Why it matters: This wording gives the verse its distinct role inside the cluster.
How certain? strongWhat Remains True
Violence and uncontrolled conflict destroy trust, endanger bodies, and often rebound upon those who organize them. In Proverbs 20:3, that bounded truth is expressed through “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool...,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Prioritize immediate safety, de-escalation where possible, accountable intervention, evidence preservation, and competent help. For Proverbs 20:3, preserve the sequence: verse role (uses contrastive parallelism to place “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife” against “every fool will be meddling”) -> contextual meaning in Proverbs 20:1–4 -> proportionate truth -> this accountable response.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 20:1–4 — Intoxication, royal anger, conflict, and delayed workSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? strong
Where care is needed
This sentence saying states a context-shaped moral pattern. Its small-cluster boundary and degree of generality remain reviewable; exceptional outcomes do not make the observation meaningless or turn it into a guarantee.
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 20:1–4, 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 20:1-20:4
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. 1140-1144, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 20:1–4
Open source ↗