Proverbs 6 · a question people ask
"if you have become collateral for your neighbor" (6:1). Does the chapter say it is wrong to stand as collateral for someone?
Here is what the chapter says. It speaks to a son who already has: "My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor" (6:1), and it tells him to get free at once (6:3-5). It doesn't say what the pledge was for, or whether he was wrong to make it. It says he is "trapped by the words of your mouth" (6:2). Other sayings in Proverbs warn against it: "He who is collateral for a stranger will suffer for it, but he who refuses pledges of collateral is secure" (Proverbs 11:15), "A man void of understanding strikes hands, and becomes collateral in the presence of his neighbor" (Proverbs 17:18), and "Don’t you be one of those who strike hands, of those who are collateral for debts" (Proverbs 22:26), with a reason: "If you don’t have means to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?" (Proverbs 22:27). The same book also says, "Don’t withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do it" (Proverbs 3:27). These are sayings, and these notes don't turn them into a rule for anyone's money today or say what any reader should do.
The verses
“My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger, you are trapped by the words of your mouth; you are ensnared with the words of your mouth. Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself, since you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor. Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.”
“He who is collateral for a stranger will suffer for it, but he who refuses pledges of collateral is secure.”
“A man void of understanding strikes hands, and becomes collateral in the presence of his neighbor.”
“Don’t you be one of those who strike hands, of those who are collateral for debts. If you don’t have means to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?”