What Does Proverbs 10:2 Mean in the King James?
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse makes alignment an active rescuer: ill-gotten treasure cannot protect a life from death.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now to the reader: treasure gained through wrongdoing has no power to deliver from death. Righteousness, צְדָקָה (tsedaqah, alignment), acts as rescue, drawing a life away from death.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that enough ill-gotten wealth can make a person safe when death comes.
THE ROOT
צְדָקָה
tsedaqah
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
Alignment; being right or just.
English can make righteousness sound like a status or moral score, while the Hebrew root points to alignment with what is right. Here that alignment is not merely possessed; it is named as what delivers from death.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: rightness, justice
צֶדֶק
This branch shows the quality of rightness carried by the alignment named in the verse.
tsaddiq: one who is right or just
צַדִּיק
This related form describes a person in that alignment, tying righteousness to a way of being rather than a store of wealth.
תַּצִּיל
tatzil
GROWS FROM
נצל
n-ts-l
To snatch away, rescue, or deliver.
“delivereth” in this verse is tatzil. The verb תַּצִּיל (tatzil, rescues) comes from a root of extraction: being pulled away from what holds or threatens. The verse portrays alignment as an active rescue from death, not simply a favorable label.
ALSO GROWS
hitzil: he rescued or delivered
הִצִּיל
This form shares the rescue verb used in the verse; Psalm 34:4 uses it for deliverance from fear.
matsil: rescuer, one who delivers
מַצִּיל
This related form names the one who pulls another out, making the verse’s deliverance a concrete act of rescue.
THE PATTERN
Accumulated wealth cannot ransom a life from death; alignment with what is right can act as deliverance.
Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death.For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:THE THREAD
I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.The word תַּצִּיל (tatzil, rescues) shares the root נצל (n-ts-l, to snatch away or rescue) with “delivered” in this Psalm. Proverbs applies that rescue to death; the Psalm uses the same verb for fear, showing the word’s motion as extraction from what holds or threatens.
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