Proverbs 6 Bible study: The commandment is a lamp

The chapter opens with a son who has made a pledge: "My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger" (6:1) (tap collateral). The father doesn't say what the pledge was for. He says what it has done: "you are trapped by the words of your mouth; you are ensnared with the words of your mouth" (6:2). In Hebrew hands in 6:1 and hand in 6:3 are one word, kaf: the son struck his hands, and now "you have come into the hand of your neighbor" (6:3). So the father tells him what to do, and when: "Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself" (6:3) (tap deliver), "Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor" (6:3), and "Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids" (6:4). The section ends with two pictures of getting away: "Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler" (6:5).

Proverbs 6:3→leads toLuke 12:58-59

The father tells a son who has pledged himself for his neighbor, "you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor" (Proverbs 6:3), and not to wait: "Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids" (Proverbs 6:4). "Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter" (Proverbs 6:5). Jesus said to the multitudes, "For when you are going with your adversary before the magistrate, try diligently on the way to be released from him, lest perhaps he drag you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison" (Luke 12:58), and "I tell you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the very last penny" (Luke 12:59). Luke doesn't name Proverbs, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, not a shared word: someone held by another's claim is told to go at once and get free while there is still time. Jesus' words come right after he asks the multitudes why they don't "interpret this time" (Luke 12:56), and "Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:57). Some Christians hear first the plain counsel of Luke 12:58's own words, about a magistrate, a judge and a prison, and read Proverbs 6:3-5 beside it as the same counsel: don't wait. Others, reading Jesus' words in their setting (Luke 12:56-57), hear a call to be put right before judgment comes, and see in the father's urgency only something like it; many hear both. Jesus said nothing of Proverbs or of pledges, and neither reading applies the father's words to anyone's money today.

חָמַדchamadsay kha-MAD

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "desire, take pleasure in". Strong's: "to delight in beauty". "Don’t lust after her beauty in your heart" (6:25): the WEB's lust is chamad, the verb of "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife" (Exodus 20:17). In Hebrew both verses read tachmod; 6:25 puts al before it and the commandment lo, two words for not. Four verses on, the father speaks of the man who goes in to "his neighbor’s wife" (6:29): in Hebrew the commandment's two words for your neighbor's wife, with his for your. Deuteronomy has chamad in the same place: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife" (Deuteronomy 5:21).