What Does Proverbs 14:34 Mean in the King James?
Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.
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 a people’s stature the visible fruit of shared alignment, so wrongdoing cannot stay private.
THE MEANING
Righteousness, alignment with what is right, raises the shared life of a people now. When people miss that alignment, the harm reaches beyond private life into the community’s public standing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wrongdoing stays private: the verse names its reproach as belonging to a people.
THE ROOT
צְדָקָה
tsedaqah
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
Alignment with what is right; rightness and justice.
“Righteousness” in this verse is tsedaqah. The word points to alignment with what is right, not a status sealed off from public life. Here that alignment is something a whole people can embody, and it raises their shared standing.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: rightness, justice
צֶדֶק
It shows righteousness as a quality of what is right, not merely a private label.
tsaddiq: one who is upright, aligned with what is right
צַדִּיק
It shows that the same root describes both alignment and the person embodying it.
tsedaqah: righteousness, justice
צְדָקָה
This is the verse’s word: alignment becomes a force shaping the life of a people.
תְּרוֹמֵם
teromem
GROWS FROM
רום
r-w-m
To rise, be high, or raise up.
“exalteth” in this verse is teromem. The verb pictures upward movement: righteousness does not merely preserve a nation’s position; it raises it. Proverbs 11:11 uses this same root for a city being exalted, making the lift social and visible.
ALSO GROWS
ram: high, elevated
רָם
It holds the image of height contained in the verse’s upward movement.
marom: height, high place
מָרוֹם
It shows the root’s movement reaching a higher place.
herim: raised, lifted
הֵרִים
It makes explicit the act of lifting that the verse attributes to righteousness.
חַטָּאת
chatat
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
To miss, err, or go wrong.
The root presents sin as missing or erring; here that failure has a public face, becoming reproach among peoples. The Hebrew line also places חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love) in this people-wide frame, joining what a shared life embodies with what it misses.
ALSO GROWS
chata: to miss, err, do wrong
חָטָא
It shows the action beneath the noun: a departure from what is right.
chet: a miss, wrongdoing
חֵטְא
It keeps the image of sin as a failure or missing, rather than an abstract label.
chatat: sin; also, a sin offering
חַטָּאת
This is the verse’s word, linking the people’s wrongdoing with the reproach named in the KJV.
THE PATTERN
A people’s shared alignment shapes its public stature: it can raise the community, while its missing brings reproach.
By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.THE THREAD
By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.Proverbs 11:11 uses the same Hebrew root, רום (rum, to rise or raise up), for a city being exalted. The shared root shows the scale of the movement: righteousness raises a nation through the life taking shape in its cities.
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