What Does Proverbs 31:24 Mean in the King James?
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
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 word translated “delivereth” means “give” or “place”: what she makes moves from her hands into another’s.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you where skilled making enters exchange: what your hands shape passes into another person’s hands. Making and giving appear as one movement, with provision traveling through the work.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the value of your work lives only in what you produce: the verse includes what passes from your hands to another’s.
THE ROOT
נָתְנָה
natenah
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, set, put, or place.
The verb rendered “delivereth” is נָתְנָה (natenah), “she gave,” from the root נתן (natan), “give or place.” The wording joins her finished craft to its passage into exchange: the girdle is given to the merchant.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give or grant.
נָתַן
This is the verb’s sense in the verse: she gives the girdle to the merchant.
natan: To put or set something in a place.
נָתַן
Genesis 1:17 uses this same root for God setting the lights in the heavens; here, what she makes is placed into another’s hands.
THE PATTERN
Skilled labor becomes provision as its fruit passes into another’s hands.
When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.THE THREAD
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,The Hebrew root נתן (natan), “give, set, place,” appears behind “delivereth” here and “set” in Genesis. The same root holds together placing something where it can serve and giving what has been made into another’s hands.
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