Proverbs 3:5-6

What Proverbs 3:5-6 means

The two verses make one instruction with a promise attached. There are three commands: trust in the LORD with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding, and acknowledge him in all your ways. The promise follows: he shall direct thy paths.

In the Bible the heart is the center of a person, where thinking, choosing, and feeling all meet. Trusting with all thine heart means holding nothing back as a private reserve. To lean is to rest your weight on something, the way you lean on a staff. The point is not that a person should stop thinking. It is that human understanding is not strong enough to bear the full weight of a life.

To acknowledge God in all thy ways means to know him and own him in every part of life, not only in religious moments. The promise, he shall direct thy paths, is often explained from the Hebrew as making the paths straight or smooth: God clears the way ahead for the one who walks with him.

Verse 7 restates the idea in other words: be not wise in thine own eyes; fear the LORD, and depart from evil. Trusting God and being humble about one's own wisdom go together.

Background and context

Before: Proverbs 3:1-4. A father speaks to his son: My son, forget not my law, and let your heart keep my commandments, for they will add length of days, long life, and peace. Let mercy and truth not forsake you; bind them about your neck and write them on the table of your heart, and you will find favour with God and man.

After: Proverbs 3:7-12. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and depart from evil, and it will be health and strength to you. Honour the LORD with your substance and the firstfruits of all your increase. And do not despise the LORD's chastening, for whom the LORD loveth he correcteth, as a father the son he delights in.

Proverbs 1-9 is a series of talks from a father to a son, most of them opening with My son. The book's first verse names it the proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel.

Key verses

Cross references

• Psalm 37:5 Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him.Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
• Jeremiah 17:7-8 The man who trusts in the LORD is like a tree planted by the waters.Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
• Proverbs 16:9 A man's heart deviseth his way, but the LORD directeth his steps.A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.
• Isaiah 55:8-9 God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours.For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
• Hebrews 12:5-6 Quotes Proverbs 3:11-12 on the LORD's chastening.And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
• Proverbs 1:1 The book is introduced as the proverbs of Solomon.The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;