https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSmHR-GWI1w

“Proverbs 6:27” applies a verse about adultery to the power of memory and how we deal with those we’ve lost.

Track: “Proverbs 6:27”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

The title verse is simple: “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” It’s evocative and clear. The proverb means you will be burned if you play with fire, but it also means that everyone will know it. Your clothes are burned, but not destroyed. It seems like the suggestion is that you aren’t consumed immediately by fire, but rather that people see your singed clothes and know what happened.

The preceding verses in the Bible explain the context of adultery, but the Goats song allows for wider interpretation. The character waits in an old home and does mundane tasks to pass the time and ignore the nagging thought of someone long gone. It’s another version of the emotions in “Half Dead,” though less directly about a breakup. In “Proverbs 6:27” our hero wears their heart on their sleeve, but it could be a death instead of a temporary loss and it could be a friend instead of a lover. Whatever the characters, you can insert yourself and imagine the time spent “as day gives way to day gives way to day gives way to day.”

The chorus is simple like the verse, but it’s prime John Darnielle. “I treat each crushing moment like a gift” shows that the character is wallowing in difficult head space across Betamax tapes and old memories, but “and wait for the fog to lift” means that they expect this to have an end. You can be scarred by loss, the Mountain Goats remind you, but you’re gonna get out of that house eventually and it’ll pass. It isn’t purely hopeful, but the conclusion suggests that since singed clothes won’t kill you, the fire is fine.