What Does Proverbs 23:10 Mean in the King James?
Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
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 Hebrew links the boundary to the act of setting it, so shifting the marker erases a limit that protects the vulnerable.
THE MEANING
A boundary set around another person’s land is part of their protection. This verse speaks now against moving that limit or entering the fields of people whose father is absent. Their vulnerability does not make their claim less real.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is unguarded is unclaimed. A fatherless person’s field is not available ground.
THE ROOT
גְּבוּל
gebul
GROWS FROM
גבל
g-b-l
To bound, mark off, or set a limit.
“landmark” in this verse is gebul. The Hebrew word for the boundary shares its root with the verb for setting a boundary. The English separates the marker from the act that established it; the root holds them together, so moving the marker changes whose land counts as theirs.
ALSO GROWS
gābal: To bound, border, or set a limit.
גָּבַל
In Deuteronomy 19:14, this root describes what earlier people “have set,” making the deliberate boundary-setting explicit.
gebul: Boundary, border, or territory.
גְּבוּל
Here it names the limit around the field, the line whose displacement would reach into the fatherless person’s land.
THE PATTERN
A community’s care for the vulnerable includes preserving their claim to what is theirs.
Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.The same גבל (g-b-l, to bound or set a limit) root names the boundary here and the act of setting it in Deuteronomy. That link makes the marker a deliberately established limit: shifting it reaches into a neighbor’s inheritance.
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