Proverbs 6:3-5

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

³Do this now [at once and earnestly], my son, and deliver yourself when you have put yourself into the ^[a]power of your neighbor; go, bestir and humble yourself, and beg your neighbor [to pay his debt and thereby release you].

⁴Give not [unnecessary] sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids;

⁵Deliver yourself, as a roe or gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.

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Footnotes

Proverbs 6:3 The Bible consistently teaches that one is not to forsake a friend, and this passage is not to be otherwise construed. But it is one thing to lend a friend money, and quite another thing to promise to pay his debts for him if he fails to do so himself. It might cost one, under the rigid customary laws governing debt, his money, his land, his bed, and his clothing—and if these were not sufficient, he and his wife and children could be sold as slaves, not to be released until the next Year of Jubilee—fifty years after the previous one. God’s Word is very plain on the subject of not underwriting another person’s debts (see Prov. 11:15; 17:18; 22:26).