What Does Ecclesiastes 7:21 Mean?
Also, do not set your heart to all the words that are spoken, lest you hear your servant curse you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear thy servant curse thee:THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures attention as giving your heart to words, so not every remark deserves a place within you.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the impulse to take in every word spoken around you: attention gives those words a place in your heart. Some speech may reach you only through overhearing, and it can expose contempt from someone close to you. The warning recognizes that knowing every word is not always harmless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hearing everything spoken around you is always useful: some knowledge only brings you the sting of contempt.
THE ROOT
אַל־תִּתֵּן לִבֶּךָ
ʾal-titten libbekha
GROWS FROM
נתן
give, set, place
“set your heart to” in this verse is ʾal-titten libbekha. Beneath “take no heed” is the concrete phrase “do not give your heart.” Attention is pictured as placing your inner self into what you hear; the warning concerns what you give a place within you.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give or place something.
נָתַן
This is the verb in the phrase “give your heart,” making attention an act of placing.
mattanah: A gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This related word keeps the sense of giving visible: your heart is what the phrase says not to give to every passing remark.
מְקַלֶּלְךָ
məqallelkha
GROWS FROM
קלל
be light; make light of; curse or revile
“curse” in this verse is məqallelkha. The Hebrew for cursing carries the sense of making someone light, treating them as slight or of little weight. The next verse uses this same root for the reader’s own cursing of others, turning the warning into a recognition of shared human frailty.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light in weight or significance.
קַל
This shade makes the contempt in “curse” more vivid: the speech treats someone as though they carry little weight.
qelalah: A curse or expression of contempt.
קְלָלָה
This noun from the same root makes explicit that the root’s “lightness” shade can become spoken contempt.
THE PATTERN
The heart is not meant to receive every offense it could learn about.
The insight of a man is slow to flare, and it is his adornment to pass over rebellion.He who covers rebellion seeks love, but he who doubles back on a word splits apart the closest friends.Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to swell.THE THREAD
For many times your own heart perceives that you yourself also curse others.The Hebrew root קלל (qalal, “make light of; curse”) appears in both verses. The next verse turns the reader’s attention from overhearing contempt to recognizing that the same heart has also spoken it.
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