Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids.
Parallel translations
- KJV Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids.
- BSB Allow no sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids.
- NKJV Give no sleep to your eyes, Nor slumber to your eyelids.
- NASB Give no sleep to your eyes, Nor slumber to your eyelids;
- NLT Don’t put it off; do it now! Don’t rest until you do.
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
Do not rest until you have freed yourself from the rash pledge. Treat the matter as truly urgent.
Overview
With vivid hyperbole, the father tells the son to deny sleep to his eyes until the dangerous obligation is resolved. The urgency underscores how seriously folly's consequences should be taken. Wisdom does not delay in dealing with a known peril.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 5
- Ps 132:4I will not give sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids;
- Prov 6:10–11A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
- Mark 13:35–36Watch therefore, for you don’t know when the lord of the house is coming, whether at evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning;
- Eccl 9:10Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol, where you are going.
- Matt 24:17–18Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take out the things that are in his house.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 6:4 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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