What Does Proverbs 2:18 Mean in the King James?
For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.
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 death visible before arrival: in the house’s downward lean and the tracks her paths have worn.
THE MEANING
You are shown a whole dwelling already leaning toward death, with paths that lead among the departed. The destination is present in the direction of the house and in the course its paths trace.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a deadly ending arrives without warning: here, the house already leans toward it and the paths already lead there.
THE ROOT
מַעְגְּלֹתֶיהָ
maʿgeloteha
GROWS FROM
עגל
ʿ-g-l
Roundness or circuit; מַעְגָּל is a track or course.
The word for her paths carries the sense of a track or course, with a connection to circling. Her paths read as established routes, and their destination is already visible.
ALSO GROWS
maʿgāl: Track, course, or path
מַעְגָּל
This is the singular form behind “paths,” giving the image the sense of a traced course.
ʿāgōl: Round
עָגֹל
Its circular sense echoes in the path word’s circuit imagery.
מָוֶת
māwet
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
To die; death as the event or outcome of dying.
The noun מָוֶת and the verb מוּת belong to one word-family: the destination named here shares its seed with the act of dying. Death is not detached from the path; it is the outcome toward which the path moves.
ALSO GROWS
mût: To die
מוּת
The verb and the noun share one root, joining the movement of dying to the destination called death.
môt tâmût: “Thou shalt surely die”
מוֹת תָּמוּת
The repeated root in Genesis 2:17 makes the same seed audible in a declaration of death.
THE PATTERN
The course of a life makes its destination visible before it arrives.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:THE THREAD
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.Both verses carry מות (m-w-t): Proverbs names death as the direction of a house and its paths, while Genesis repeats the root in “thou shalt surely die.” The shared seed connects the destination with the act of dying.
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