Keep my commandments and live, And my teaching as the apple of your eye.
Parallel translations
- WEB Keep my commandments and live! Guard my teaching as the apple of your eye.
- KJV Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.
- BSB Keep my commandments and live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.
- NKJV Keep my commands and live, And my law as the apple of your eye.
- NLT Obey my commands and live! Guard my instructions as you guard your own eyes.
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
Keep these commandments and you will truly live; guard the teaching as your most precious possession. Wisdom is life-giving and worth protecting.
Overview
The father links obedience to life and urges the son to guard his teaching as the 'apple of his eye,' the most carefully protected part. This echoes the Law's promise that keeping God's commands leads to life. It frames wisdom as something to be cherished and defended above all.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Ps 17:8Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings,
- 1 Jn 2:3–4This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commandments.
- Prov 4:4He taught me, and said to me: “Let your heart retain my words. Keep my commandments, and live.
- Lev 18:5You shall therefore keep my statutes and my ordinances; which if a man does, he shall live in them. I am Yahweh.
- John 14:21One who has my commandments, and keeps them, that person is one who loves me. One who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him.”
- 1 Jn 5:1–3Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.
- Isa 55:3Turn your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your soul will live: and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
- Prov 4:13Take firm hold of instruction. Don’t let her go. Keep her, for she is your life.
- John 12:49–50For I spoke not from myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.
- Deut 32:10He found him in a desert land, in the waste howling wilderness. He surrounded him. He cared for him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.
- John 15:14You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you.
- Zech 2:8For Yahweh of Armies says: ‘For honor he has sent me to the nations which plundered you; for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye.
- Rev 22:14Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city.
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 7:2 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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