CHAPTER 6

The Ant, the Sluggard, and Seven Things God Hates

Chapter 6 breaks from sustained discourse into four distinct short warnings: reckless co-signing of debt, laziness (illustrated by the ant), a numbered list of what God hates, and a return to the danger of adultery. The variety is deliberate — wisdom has to address financial recklessness and sexual sin with the same seriousness, because both destroy a life the same way.

1 ‘If thou art become surety for thy neighbor, if thou hast stricken thy hands for a stranger’ — surety meant guaranteeing someone else's debt with your own assets. The warning targets a specific, common financial trap of the ancient economy, not generosity itself.

2 ‘Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth’ — the danger isn't a contract signed in ink but a verbal promise given too quickly; Proverbs treats spoken commitments as fully binding.

3 ‘Do this now... deliver thyself... humble thyself, and urge thy neighbor’ — the counsel is strikingly undignified: go back and beg to be released, because pride is a poor trade for financial ruin.

4 ‘Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids’ — the urgency demanded matches the size of the exposure; this is treated as an emergency, not a matter to get to eventually.

5 ‘Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler’ — the imagery of frantic escape underlines just how seriously Proverbs takes the danger of taking on someone else's debt.

6 ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise’ — the address shifts to a new topic and a new target: not the reckless guarantor but the lazy man, told to learn from an insect smaller and less impressive than himself.

7 ‘Which having no chief, overseer, or ruler’ — the ant's discipline is not imposed from outside by a supervisor; it is self-generated, which is precisely the point being made to the sluggard.

8 ‘Provideth her bread in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest’ — the ant works ahead of need, not in response to crisis; foresight, not just effort, is the virtue being praised.

9 ‘How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?’ — the tone turns from illustration to direct, almost exasperated address, the closest Proverbs gets to shaking someone awake.

10 ‘Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep’ — the sluggard's own rationalizing voice is quoted, always asking for just a little more; laziness rarely announces itself as a decision, only as a series of small delays.

11 ‘So shall thy poverty come as a robber, and thy want as an armed man’ — the consequence is described as violent and sudden, even though its cause (repeated small delays) was gradual and quiet.

12 ‘A worthless person, a man of iniquity, is he that walketh with a wicked mouth’ — a third figure now enters: the deliberately deceptive troublemaker, distinct from both the reckless guarantor and the sluggard.

13 ‘Winketh with his eyes, speaketh with his feet, teacheth with his fingers’ — a picture of coded, deniable communication; this person schemes in a way designed to leave no one able to prove exactly what was said.

14 ‘Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth evil continually; he soweth discord’ — the sequence — hidden signals, then a corrupt heart, then active discord — shows manipulation escalating from something small into open damage.

15 ‘Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; on a sudden shall he be broken, and that without remedy’ — as with the sluggard's poverty in verse 11, the reckoning is abrupt even though the pattern behind it was long in the making.

16 ‘There are six things which Jehovah hateth; yea, seven which are an abomination unto him’ — the numerical formula (six... seven) is a common Hebrew poetic device signaling a complete, emphatic list — not merely six examples, but the full picture.

17 ‘Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood’ — the list begins with pride before it ever reaches violence; arrogance is treated as morally serious in its own right, not just a precursor to worse things.

18 ‘A heart that deviseth wicked purposes, feet that are swift in running to mischief’ — the heart's plotting and the feet's eagerness are named together, showing intention and action as equally condemned.

19 ‘A false witness that uttereth lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren’ — the list closes exactly where verse 14 left off, on discord-sowing — God's hatred of division within a community bookends the whole passage.

20 ‘My son, keep the commandment of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother’ — the chapter pivots back to parental instruction, setting up the final warning against adultery with the same domestic framing used in chapter 1.

21 ‘Bind them continually upon thy heart; tie them about thy neck’ — the same jewelry-and-permanence imagery from earlier chapters returns just before the most serious warning in the chapter.

22 ‘When thou walkest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall watch over thee’ — parental instruction, once internalized, is pictured as active at every hour — not a rule consulted occasionally but a constant companion.

23 ‘The commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life’ — correction is reframed one more time, now as illumination rather than restriction — light that lets a person see the danger ahead.

24 ‘To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the foreigner's tongue’ — the purpose of all this instruction is now stated directly: protection from exactly the danger chapter 5 already described in detail.

25 ‘Lust not after her beauty in thy heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids’ — the warning targets the internal moment of lingering desire, before any external act, since that is where the whole chain of temptation actually begins.

26 ‘For on account of a harlot a man is reduced to a piece of bread; and the adulteress hunteth for the precious life’ — a stark cost comparison: one path costs money, the other costs life itself — the second danger is treated as categorically worse.

27 ‘Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?’ — the first of two vivid rhetorical questions; the answer is obviously no, and that obviousness is the entire argument.

28 ‘Can one walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be scorched?’ — the second question intensifies the first; Proverbs is arguing that adultery's consequences aren't a possible risk but a physical certainty, like fire burning skin.

29 ‘So he that goeth in to his neighbor's wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be unpunished’ — the metaphor is applied directly, without softening: this is treated as a law of consequence as fixed as fire itself.

30 ‘Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy himself when he is hungry’ — an unexpected comparison: even theft driven by real need gets a measure of social sympathy that adultery, driven by desire rather than necessity, will not receive.

31 ‘If he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house’ — even the sympathetically-viewed thief still pays a steep, tangible price; the point sets up an even steeper one to follow.

32 ‘He that committeth adultery with a woman is void of understanding; he doeth it who would destroy his own soul’ — the verdict is blunt: this isn't merely risky behavior but self-destruction, chosen by someone lacking the very understanding this whole book exists to give.

33 ‘Wounds and dishonor shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away’ — unlike the thief's sevenfold restitution, which can be paid off, this reproach is described as lasting — a stain rather than a settled debt.

34 ‘Jealousy is the rage of a man; and he will not spare in the day of vengeance’ — the chapter names a very human, predictable consequence: a wronged husband's anger, not merely an abstract moral principle.

35 ‘He will not regard any ransom; neither will he rest content, though thou givest many gifts’ — the chapter's closing line insists this is a debt no payment can settle, in sharp contrast to the sevenfold restitution that could satisfy the case of theft just a few verses earlier.