New International Version
Proverbs 6:6
6Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
Proverbs 6:6 in other versions
- King James Version (KJV)Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
- English Standard Version (ESV)Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.
- New King James Version (NKJV)Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise,
- New Living Translation (NLT)Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!
Context of Proverbs 6:6
4Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. 5Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler. Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! 7It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, 8yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
Read all of Proverbs 6Proverbs 6:6 word by word
לֵֽךְ־אֶל־נְמָלָ֥ה עָצֵ֑ל רְאֵ֖ה דְרָכֶ֣יהָ וַחֲכָֽם׃Read the interlinear
Words taken from the KJV.
Cross-references for Proverbs 6:6
- Proverbs 1:17How useless to spread a net where every bird can see it!
- Job 12:7“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
- Isaiah 1:3The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”
- Matthew 6:26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
- Proverbs 6:9How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?
- Proverbs 10:26As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so are sluggards to those who send them.
- Proverbs 13:4A sluggard’s appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.
- Proverbs 15:19The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.
- Proverbs 18:9One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.
- Proverbs 19:15Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless go hungry.
- Proverbs 20:4Sluggards do not plow in season; so at harvest time they look but find nothing.
- Proverbs 21:25The craving of a sluggard will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work.
- Proverbs 22:13The sluggard says, “There’s a lion outside! I’ll be killed in the public square!”
- Proverbs 24:30I went past the field of a sluggard, past the vineyard of someone who has no sense;
- Proverbs 26:13A sluggard says, “There’s a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!”
- Matthew 25:26“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?
Commentaries on Proverbs 6:6
- Adam Clarke Bible Commentary · v. 6Go to the ant, thou sluggard - נמלה nemalah, the ant, is a remarkable creature for foresight, industry, and economy. At the proper seasons they collect their food - not in the summer to lay up for the winter; for they sleep during the winter, and eat not; and therefore such hoards would be to them useless; but when the food necessary for them is most plentiful, then they collect it for their consumption in the proper seasons. No insect is more laborious…Read the comment
- Barnes’ Notes on the Bible · v. 6The warning against the wastefulness of the prodigal is followed by a warning as emphatic against the wastefulness of sloth. The point of comparison with the ant is not so much the foresight of the insect as its unwearied activity during the appointed season, rebuking man‘s inaction at a special crisis Proverbs 6:4. In Proverbs 30:25, the storing, provident habit of the ant is noticed.Read the comment
- Matthew Henry Concise Commentary · v. 6-11Verses 6-11 Diligence in business is every man's wisdom and duty; not so much that he may attain worldly wealth, as that he may not be a burden to others, or a scandal to the church. The ants are more diligent than slothful men. We may learn wisdom from the meanest insects, and be shamed by them. Habits of indolence and indulgence grow upon people. Thus life runs to waste; and poverty, though at first at a distance, gradually draws near, like a traveller…Read the comment
- Tyndale Open Study Notes · v. 6-11Lazy people sleep instead of preparing for what they need (see also Proverbs 24:33–34). They are the opposite of self-motivated and hardworking ants. Extra sleep and more slumber sarcastically describe a lazy person’s ambition.Read the comment
- Jamieson–Fausset–Brown Commentary · v. 6-86-8. The improvident sluggards usually want sureties. Hence, such are advised to industry by the ant's example.Read the comment
Topics related to Proverbs 6:6
In the dictionaries
Commentaries on Proverbs 6
- Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
- Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
- Matthew Henry Concise Commentary
- Tyndale Open Study Notes
- Jamieson–Fausset–Brown Commentary
- Rashi on Tanakh
- Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
- John Wesley’s Notes
- Darby Translation Notes
- Geneva Bible Translation Notes
- Kingcomments
- Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary
- Matthew Henry’s Modern English Commentary
- Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary
- EGW Writings
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