Proverbs 20

The verse gives the bottle a personality and a rap sheet. It is a warning about what alcohol does to a person's judgment, not a rule handed down about whether to touch it.

Provoking a powerful man is not brave, it is expensive. The verse counts the cost to the provoker rather than judging the king.

Walking away is the achievement. Starting a fight takes no skill at all, which is the second line's whole point.

He skips the cold work and shows up for the payday. The verse is about timing, and about a season that cannot be recovered.

People carry more than they say. The verse describes the skill of getting it up to the surface.

Everyone advertises their own loyalty. Very few can be counted on, and the verse says the gap between those two facts is the problem.

A life of integrity leaves something behind for the people who come next. The verse observes an inheritance, and it does not sign a contract about anyone's kids.

A good judge does not have to say anything. The verse describes evil dispersing under a look.

Nobody can say it. The verse asks a question whose answer is silence, and it is asking about self-cleansing specifically, not about whether anyone has ever been made clean.

Two sets of scales, one for buying and one for selling. The verse calls rigged commerce something God finds detestable.

Character shows up early. The verse says you can read a young person by what they do, not by what they are able to say about themselves.

Your capacity to hear and to see was given to you. The verse names the maker and leaves the implication for the reader.

The warning is against loving sleep, not against sleeping. The verse names an appetite rather than a schedule.

He runs the seller down to get the price, then brags about the bargain on the walk home. The verse catches a small, universal dishonesty.

Gold is common enough to be counted. Speech that actually knows something is the rarer find, and the verse prices it accordingly.

If a man has cosigned for someone he does not know, get collateral before you lend to him. The verse is practical advice to a third party, not a rule about debt.

Stolen bread tastes better going in. The verse does not deny the sweetness, which is why the second line lands.

Nothing large should be attempted alone. The verse says it about strategy in general and then about the highest-stakes case available.

Someone who carries other people's business will carry yours. The second line adds the tell to watch for, and it is flattery.

The verse is about cursing a parent, an act of open contempt, and it says the man who does it loses his own light. It is not about a strained relationship.

Money that arrives too fast and too early tends not to last. The verse is about the manner of acquiring, not about the amount.

Do not become the one who settles the score. The verse takes the case out of your hands and does not ask you to pretend nothing happened.

The same offense, said a second time. The chapter cared enough about rigged scales to come back to them thirteen verses later.

Your steps are not finally your own arrangement, so full understanding of your own road is not on offer. The verse ends in a question rather than a reassurance.

Promising God something in a hot moment, then trying to negotiate later, traps the person who did it. The trap is self-set.

A good ruler separates the harmful from the rest and deals with them decisively. The image comes off a threshing floor.

God gave a person an interior light. The verse is about the capacity for self-knowledge, and the lamp belongs to the man.

What keeps a king in place is not force. The verse names loyal love and reliability as the actual load-bearing structure.

Each stage of life has its own distinction, and neither is a consolation prize for the other.

The verse belongs to the chapter's run about royal justice, and it observes that real consequences reach a person where argument does not. Its subject is a magistrate, not God.