What Does Proverbs 31:1 Mean in the King James?
The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.
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 king’s words carry a weight his mother first placed on him: authority here is received before it is spoken.
THE MEANING
Lemuel (לְמוּאֵל, Lemuel, “for God”) bears a name that points beyond himself. His words are called a burden or oracle, and his mother’s instruction is part of what gives them shape and weight.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that power makes you self-originating: this king’s words are named as something his mother taught him.
THE ROOT
מַשָּׂא
massa burden or
GROWS FROM
נשא
Lift, carry, bear.
The word rendered “prophecy” also carries the sense of a burden: something borne. The verse lets the king’s words be both an utterance and a weight, formed through instruction before they are voiced.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This root gives the oracle its image of something carried, not merely spoken.
massa: A burden or oracle.
מַשָּׂא
The same word holds the weight of what is carried and the utterance that bears it.
יִסְּרַתּוּ
yisserato she instructed
GROWS FROM
יסר
Instruct, discipline, correct.
The verb translated “taught” carries the sense of formative instruction that can also correct and restrain. The king’s words are shaped by more than information: they come through teaching that forms the person who speaks.
ALSO GROWS
musar: Instruction or discipline.
מוּסָר
This noun names the kind of formative teaching carried by the verb in this verse.
yeyasser: To discipline or instruct.
יְיַסֵּר
This verb shows that instruction in this root can shape through correction as well as teaching.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom that can bear public authority is formed first through close instruction.
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.THE THREAD
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;“Instruction” here is מוּסָר (musar, instruction or discipline), from the same root יסר (y-s-r, instruct or correct) as “taught” in Proverbs 31:1. The mother’s teaching is the formative instruction Proverbs names as part of perceiving wisdom.
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