Verse Lens · Context pointer
Proverbs 20:4 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 4. 4The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.
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 “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold” beside “therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 20:1–4
Follow Proverbs 20:1–4, not verse 20:4 alone. This line uses two-part parallelism to place “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold” beside “therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing”, while the complete unit distinguishes a normal moral direction from a guaranteed outcome.
Why It Needs Context
Proverbs 20:4 uses two-part parallelism to place “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold” beside “therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing”. Because this line supplies setup, support, continuation, or result, “Intoxication, royal anger, conflict, and delayed work” provides the meaning it cannot responsibly carry alone.
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 context pointer
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 ↗