What Does Proverbs 24:29 Mean in the King James?
Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work.
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
Retaliation is a returned deed: the harm you send back still takes its shape from what first reached you.
THE MEANING
The verse names a live argument in the reader: he did this to me, so I will do it back. Hebrew repeats the root for “do,” making the proposed answer a mirror, and frames “render” as returning the deed. It exposes payback as imitation that takes its measure from the injury.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that returning an injury becomes just simply because it matches what was done to you.
THE ROOT
אָשִׁיב
ashiv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
To turn back, return.
The word translated “render” comes from שׁוּב (shuv), the root of returning. The speaker imagines sending the deed back along the path it came from.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch carries the root’s motion of return, which the verse places inside the speaker’s proposed payback.
heshiv: To bring back, restore, return.
הֵשִׁיב
Proverbs 24:12 uses this same root for “render”; there, the verse attributes the return according to a person’s work to God.
עָשָׂה
asah
GROWS FROM
עשה
To do, make, act.
The Hebrew repeats עשה (asah): he did to me, I will do to him. That repetition makes retaliation an imitation, with the first act supplying the pattern for the second.
ALSO GROWS
ma'aseh: Deed, act, work.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun grows from the same root and shows how an action becomes a deed that can be named and returned.
asiyah: Doing, action.
עֲשִׂיָּה
The branch keeps the root’s sense of acting, echoing the verse’s repeated movement from what one person does to what the other proposes to do.
THE PATTERN
Retaliation copies the harm received, while wisdom refuses to let that harm set the measure of what comes next.
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the LORD, and he shall save thee.Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.THE THREAD
If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?The Hebrew word translated “render” in both verses comes from שׁוּב (shuv), meaning to return. Proverbs 24:12 attributes the return according to a person’s work to God, while Proverbs 24:29 places that language in the human voice of payback.
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