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Proverbs 6:20–35, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 6:20–35
Parental instruction exposes adultery's cost
Father's command and mother's teaching are a lamp for the road, not a weapon in the house
My son, keep your father's commandment, and do not forsake your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart; tie them around your neck. When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will keep you; when you wake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp, the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline the way of life, to keep you from a neighbor's wife, from the smooth tongue of a forbidden woman.
Parents here are teachers of life whose words accompany ordinary hours. That honor is not a warrant for abuse, and a lamp does not require a child to obey a command to sin or to suffer harm. The specific use of the lamp in this unit is protection from adultery.
Desire, fire, and a jealous husband name costs without turning women into prey or property
Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, or let her catch you with her eyelids. A prostitute reduces a man to a loaf of bread, and a married woman hunts a precious life. Can a man carry fire in his chest and his clothes not be burned? Walk on coals and not scorch his feet? So is the one who goes in to his neighbor's wife; whoever touches her will not go unpunished.
The comparisons are about the son's choice: fire burns the one who carries it. Hunt names predatory enticement and danger to life, including violence in the wake of the act. The jealous husband's rage, the wound, the lasting disgrace, and the contrast with a starving thief who still must repay sevenfold, all press the cost of adultery. They do not authorize revenge, honor killing, or control of women's bodies. A loaf of bread is the picture of being spent, not a sneer at poor or sexually used women. Survivors of coercion are not this hunter, and the neighbor's wife remains a neighbor, not a trap you may blame for your own fire.
How this should shape us
Let faithful teaching talk you out of a neighbor's bed. Do not nurse desire as a private right. Refuse both the affair and any vengeance that would answer it with more violence. Do not use a mother's law or a husband's jealousy to excuse harm to a woman.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 6:20–35 in your own words. Identify its form and collection, trace one line from role through contextual meaning and enduring truth to application, name one uncertainty, and reject one misuse explicitly.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful readers disagree?
Best judgment: Interpreters debate composition date, social setting, the relation of parental voices to personified Wisdom, and specific lexical or textual questions. The present judgment follows the received discourse while keeping those historical reconstructions probable or uncertain rather than settled.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Proverbs 6:20–35, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 6:20-6:35
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1093-1096, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 6:20–35
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 6:20–35 and the Purpose, parental discourses, and the rival invitations of Wisdom and Folly outline
Supports: One tested account of urban imagery and continuity across the book without inferring one composition setting.
Dell, ‘Wisdom and Folly in the city,’ SJT 69.4 (2016), pp. 389-401, sections on maxims, social indicators, Proverbs 1-9, and conclusion relevant to Proverbs 6:20–35
Supports: Feminist and literary review of Wisdom, Folly, Strange Woman, mothers, wives, women in sentence sayings, and the closing woman of strength.
Hartwell, Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between (Birmingham PhD, 2017), pp. 13-25, 132-171, 172-204, 205-244, and 245-260 as relevant to the gendered figures and sayings in Proverbs 6:20–35
Supports: Literal, metaphorical, ancient-practice, modern-effect, and positive-discipline review without erasing the ancient physical wording.
Chukwuma, HTS 81.1 (2025), pp. 3-5 on Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-14 and pp. 5-7 on positive discipline and safeguarding, as relevant to Proverbs 6:20–35
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
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 6:20–35, 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 6:20-6:35
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. 1093-1096, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 6:20–35
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 6:20–35 and the Purpose, parental discourses, and the rival invitations of Wisdom and Folly outline
Open source ↗peer reviewed journal article
Wisdom and Folly in the city: exploring urban contexts in the book of Proverbs
Katharine J. Dell
Scottish Journal of Theology 69.4, 2016
Supports: One tested account of urban imagery and continuity across the book without inferring one composition setting.
Exact location: Dell, ‘Wisdom and Folly in the city,’ SJT 69.4 (2016), pp. 389-401, sections on maxims, social indicators, Proverbs 1-9, and conclusion relevant to Proverbs 6:20–35
Open source ↗open access doctoral thesis
Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between: in search of a real woman in the Book of Proverbs
Jeanette May Hartwell
University of Birmingham, 2017
Supports: Feminist and literary review of Wisdom, Folly, Strange Woman, mothers, wives, women in sentence sayings, and the closing woman of strength.
Exact location: Hartwell, Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between (Birmingham PhD, 2017), pp. 13-25, 132-171, 172-204, 205-244, and 245-260 as relevant to the gendered figures and sayings in Proverbs 6:20–35
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
Reading selected biblical proverbs in the light of corporal punishment in child upbringing
Helen C. Chukwuma
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 81.1, 2025
Supports: Literal, metaphorical, ancient-practice, modern-effect, and positive-discipline review without erasing the ancient physical wording.
Exact location: Chukwuma, HTS 81.1 (2025), pp. 3-5 on Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-14 and pp. 5-7 on positive discipline and safeguarding, as relevant to Proverbs 6:20–35
Open source ↗