What Does Proverbs 21:6 Mean in the King James?
The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek 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
What looks like treasure gained by a lie is already vanishing, driven away even as it is gathered.
THE MEANING
When your tongue acquires treasure through deception, the gain has no durable substance; the verse calls it vapor and pictures it being driven away. Its pursuit bends toward death rather than securing life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this dissolves is that successful deception proves its gain is secure; here, the apparent profit is already dissipating and cannot become life.
THE ROOT
פֹּעַל
po'al
GROWS FROM
פעל
p-ʿ-l
to do, make, or work
The word rendered “getting” comes from the root for doing or working: the treasures are the product of a tongue’s work. The verse treats deceptive speech as productive labor, then calls its yield vapor driven away.
ALSO GROWS
po'al: work, deed, or activity
פֹּעַל
It frames the treasure as something produced by the tongue’s activity.
pe'ullah: work, task, wages, or recompense
פְּעֻלָּה
This related word for work and its return echoes the verse’s picture of speech producing a yield.
הֶבֶל
hevel
GROWS FROM
הבל
h-b-l
vapor: something insubstantial and quickly gone
“Vanity” here is more than moral worthlessness: hevel pictures something as insubstantial as vapor. The treasure is named for what it becomes as it is acquired, something with no lasting hold.
ALSO GROWS
hevel: vapor, vanity, or emptiness
הֶבֶל
The verse uses this word to show that the apparent treasure has no lasting substance.
havalim: vapors or vanities, the plural form of hevel
הֲבָלִים
Proverbs 13:11 uses the same root for wealth gotten by vanity and says it diminishes, making the image of vapor’s disappearance concrete.
נִדָּף
niddaf
GROWS FROM
נדף
n-d-f
to drive away or scatter
“tossed to and fro” in this verse is niddaf. The verse does not leave vanity as an abstract judgment: the form of nadaph pictures it being driven away. Paired with hevel, the image is of treasure already scattering as it is gathered.
ALSO GROWS
nadaph: to drive away or scatter
נָדַף
The active form supplies the force behind the verse’s image of loss.
niddaf: driven away or scattered
נִדָּף
This form makes the treasure’s disappearance feel already underway.
THE PATTERN
Treasure that cannot sustain life carries its own decay, however securely it seems gathered.
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death.Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.THE THREAD
Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.“Vanity” in this verse and “vanity” in Proverbs 13:11 share the Hebrew root הבל (hevel), meaning vapor or something insubstantial. Proverbs 13:11 makes the image visible: wealth formed from vapor diminishes.
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