How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
Parallel translations
- WEB How long will you sleep, sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep?
- BSB How long will you lie there, O slacker? When will you get up from your sleep?
- NKJV How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep?
- NASB How long will you lie down, you lazy one? When will you arise from your sleep?
- NLT But you, lazybones, how long will you sleep? When will you wake up?
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
The father confronts the sluggard's endless drowsiness with a pointed question. Laziness must be roused to action.
Overview
With a sharp rhetorical question, Solomon calls the sluggard to wake from his habitual rest. The repetition exposes how laziness lulls a person into delay and inaction. The verse presses the reader to honest self-examination about wasted time and unused opportunity.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Prov 24:33–34Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
- Ps 94:8Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?
- Jer 4:14O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?
- Eph 5:14Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
- Prov 1:22How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
- 1 Th 5:2–7For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
- Rom 13:11And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
- John 1:6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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 6:9 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
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.