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Proverbs of Solomon
Proverbs › Chapter 20 › Proverbs 20:12

What Does Proverbs 20:12 Mean?

The hearing ear and the seeing eye,The LORD has made them both.Proverbs 20:12 · NKJV

It closes with the identical Hebrew phrase that closed verse 10, two verses earlier.

Quick answer

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

Read both lines

The sentence is almost bare, and the bareness is the point: two organs, one maker, no application supplied. But the last two words are the same two that ended verse 10, both of them alike, which is a deliberate echo rather than a coincidence. There, two things were an abomination together. Here, two things were made together. The chapter has set a rigged scale beside a working eye and used the same closing phrase for each, and the effect is to put honest perception and honest measurement in the same category. Faculties are equipment. What a person does with equipment given to him is the book's ordinary concern.

Related: Proverbs 20:10 · Proverbs 20:27 · Proverbs 22:2

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.

Go Deeper

If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.