If you have nothing with which to repay, Why should he take your bed from under you?
Parallel translations
- WEB If you don’t have means to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?
- KJV If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?
- BSB If you have nothing with which to pay, why should your bed be taken from under you?
- NKJV If you have nothing with which to pay, Why should he take away your bed from under you?
- NLT If you can’t pay it, even your bed will be snatched from under you.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
If you cannot pay a debt you guaranteed, you risk losing even your bed.
Overview
This explains the previous warning: reckless surety can strip a person of his most basic possessions. The bed represents the last necessities of life, taken when one cannot cover another's debt. Wisdom counsels foresight in financial commitments, that one not be enslaved by avoidable debt (Prov. 22:7).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 3
- Prov 20:16Take the garment of one who puts up collateral for a stranger; and hold him in pledge for a wayward woman.
- Exod 22:26–27If you take your neighbor’s garment as collateral, you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down,
- 2 Kgs 4:1Now a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, “Your servant my husband is dead. You know that your servant feared Yahweh. Now the creditor has come to take for himself my two children to be slaves.”
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Christ at the center
Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.
How Proverbs 22:27 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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