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19 A slanderer reveals secrets;
    so have nothing to do with a babbler!
20 Those who curse father or mother—
    their lamp will go out[a] in the dead of night.(A)
21 Possessions greedily guarded at the outset
    will not be blessed in the end.[b]

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Footnotes

  1. 20:20 Their lamp will go out: misfortune, even death, awaits them; cf. 13:9; Ex 21:17.
  2. 20:21 By definition, an inheritance is not gained by one’s own efforts but is received as a gift. If, when one first receives the inheritance, one drives everyone away, one treats it as if one acquired it by one’s own efforts. In an agricultural society, an inheritance would often be a field that would require God’s blessing to be fertile.