Verse Lens · Context pointer
Proverbs 21:20 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 20. 20There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Role in This Section
This verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling…” against “a foolish man spendeth it up”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 21:18–21
Read Proverbs 21:20 with 21:18–21. Read alone, “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the…” 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 “The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the transgressor for the upright”; by 21:21, it contributes the claim, image, or instruction “He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour”. Together the unit concentrates on justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation, truthful testimony, honest measures, and integrity, gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency within “First Solomonic sentence-saying collection.”
Why It Needs Context
Read this role inside the complete unit: the verse uses contrastive parallelism to place “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling…” against “a foolish man spendeth it up”. It does not carry a responsible standalone mandate apart from Proverbs 21:18–21.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 21:18–21 — Justice, truthful judgment, and protection from exploitation — The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the…Sources used for this context pointer
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 21:18–21, 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 21:18-21:21
Open source ↗