Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Proverbs 25:21 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 21. 21If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse uses two-part parallelism to place “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” beside “and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 25:21–22
At Proverbs 25:21, the unit uses two-part parallelism to place “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” beside “and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink”. That precise work supports “Generosity, neighbor-care, and material responsibility — If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if...” without importing a neighboring verse's subject or making the line a complete policy.
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 25:21 appears here because it uses two-part parallelism to place “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” beside “and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink”. Its contrast, image, or consequence tests the concerns gathered in Proverbs 25:21–22.
Follow the Context
- Opening (25:21): the unit uses two-part parallelism to place “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” beside “and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink”.
- Development (25:21–22): adjacent lines test generosity, neighbor-care, and material responsibility, reverent accountability before the LORD, observational wisdom drawn from creatures and ordinary life through parallelism, contrast, motive, image, or consequence.
- Close (25:22): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee”, creating the next supported pause.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be...”
In plain language: generosity, neighbor-care, and material responsibility
This verse uses two-part parallelism to place “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” beside “and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink”.
Why it matters: This wording carries interpretive, pastoral, or misuse risk requiring the full unit and explicit limits.
How certain? probableWhat This Verse Is Not Saying
The command does not require unsafe proximity, enable abuse, eliminate legal boundaries, or permit kindness as manipulation.
What Remains True
Wisdom treats timely material care and openhandedness as moral practices, not merely private feeling. In Proverbs 25:21, that bounded truth is expressed through “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be...,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Identify the concrete need, preserve the recipient's agency, give transparently, and combine immediate help with fair structures. For Proverbs 25:21, preserve the sequence: verse role (uses two-part parallelism to place “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” beside “and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink”) -> contextual meaning in Proverbs 25:21–22 -> proportionate truth -> this accountable response.
Teach It Back
Explain Proverbs 25:21's exact role in Proverbs 25:21–22. Distinguish pattern from guarantee, include “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread...,” name one uncertainty, and explicitly reject one harmful use.
Your explanation stays in this browser. It is not sent or saved.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 25:21–22 — Generosity, neighbor-care, and material responsibility — If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if...Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
Enemy-care interrupts retaliation and preserves the enemy's human need; the following coal image is debated and cannot make kindness a covert technique of torment.
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 25:21–22, 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 25:21-25:22
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. 1161-1164, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 25:21–22
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Proverbs
K. T. Aitken
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Exact location: Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 25:21–22 and the Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men outline
Open source ↗scholarly monograph chapter abstract and metadata
Context in the Sayings Collections
Stuart Weeks
Oxford University Press, in Early Israelite Wisdom, 2000
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Exact location: Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 25:21–22
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
The situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth in the Book of Proverbs
G. H. Wittenberg
Scriptura 21, 1987; open archive 2020
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Exact location: Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 25:21–22
Open source ↗