Surety, the Ant, and Seven Abominations
1 My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger, 2 you are trapped by the words of your mouth; you are ensnared with the words of your mouth. 3 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. 4 Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. 5 Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler. 6 Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways, and be wise; 7 which having no chief, overseer, or ruler, 8 provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. 9 How long will you sleep, sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep? 10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep— 11 so your poverty will come as a robber, and your scarcity as an armed man. 12 A worthless person, a man of iniquity, is he who walks with a perverse mouth, 13 who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who motions with his fingers, 14 in whose heart is perverseness, who devises evil continually, who always sows discord. 15 Therefore his calamity will come suddenly. He will be broken suddenly, and that without remedy. 16 There are six things which Yahweh hates; yes, seven which are an abomination to him: 17 arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are swift in running to mischief, 19 a false witness who utters lies, and he who sows discord among brothers.
Three unrelated warnings sit together, and the first tells a man who has guaranteed a stranger's debt to go and get out of it tonight.
Striking hands was how a guarantee was given. A man pledged himself for somebody else's debt, and the creditor could come to him if the debtor failed. The book treats this as an emergency. You are trapped by the words of your mouth; you are ensnared with the words of your mouth — repeated, because the trap is not a legal instrument but a sentence he said.
What he is told to do is undignified and urgent. Go to the neighbor. Humble yourself. Press the plea. Give no sleep to your eyes until it is undone, and get free like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter. The advice assumes the man will find this humiliating and says do it anyway, tonight. Proverbs is generous about lending to the poor and is repeatedly hard on guaranteeing strangers, and the difference is the exposure. A gift is bounded, and a pledge is not.
The ant follows, and the detail the passage stops on is administrative: she has no chief, overseer, or ruler, and provides her bread in summer anyway. What is being praised is not industry as such but self-starting. The sluggard's problem is not that he refuses work when told; it is that nothing happens without the telling. His own words are quoted, and their charm is that each request is so small — a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands. Poverty is then said to arrive as a robber, which is exactly how a slow decline feels from inside. Nothing seemed to be happening, and then it had happened.
The worthless man is drawn almost entirely in gestures. He winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, motions with his fingers. He is communicating constantly and never saying anything he can be held to, and the verse that follows tells you what the signaling is for: in whose heart is perverseness, who devises evil continually, who always sows discord.
The seven abominations close the section, and the list is arranged as a body. Eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet — then a false witness, and last of all he who sows discord among brothers. Two things about that ordering are worth holding. The heart sits in the middle, as the source of the rest. And the item given the emphatic final position is not violence or blasphemy but the man who breaks up a family or a community, which is the same offense the gesturing man was accused of a few verses earlier.
settled What this mark means