What Does Proverbs 25:16 Mean in the King James?
Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.
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 warning is not against sweetness: beyond its measure, sweetness becomes what the body rejects.
THE MEANING
You can receive something sweet and welcome without taking all of it. The verse names the point where enjoyment becomes bodily refusal: what exceeds your enough is expelled. Its warning is about measure, not sweetness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that if something is good, taking more of it can only make it better.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׂבָּעֶנּוּ
tisbaʿennu
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
s-b-ʿ
To be sated or satisfied; to have one’s fill.
The verb translated “filled” means to be satisfied or sated. The verse’s danger lies in passing from receiving honey to a satiety so complete that what was received is rejected.
ALSO GROWS
sāvēaʿ: Sated, satisfied.
שָׂבֵעַ
It shows that the verse’s “filled” is about reaching satisfaction, not merely making room for more.
sōvaʿ: Satiety, being full.
שֹׂבַע
This noun makes the threshold visible: the experience of enough has a limit.
אֱכֹל
ʾĕḵōl
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
To eat, consume.
“eat” in this verse is ʾĕḵōl. Hebrew keeps the verb for eating and nouns for food in one root family. The sentence makes intake the hinge: honey moves from something welcomed into the body to something the body forces back out.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōḵel: Food.
אֹכֶל
The shared root ties the act of eating to what is eaten.
maʾăḵāl: Food, something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
It echoes the verse’s movement from taking honey in to the body’s rejection of too much.
THE PATTERN
What is taken beyond its fitting measure can become a source of loss or control.
It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory.He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.THE THREAD
The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words.This verse repeats the Hebrew verb וַהֲקֵאתוֹ (wa-haqēʾtô), from קיא (q-y-ʾ), meaning “vomit, expel.” It extends the physical reversal of taking something in to the loss of “sweet words.”
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