What Does Proverbs 9:17 Mean in the King James?
Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
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 bread is called “bread of concealments”: secrecy is part of its appeal, while the next line reveals the end it hides.
THE MEANING
What is taken and hidden can feel sweeter precisely because it is hidden; its pleasure arrives before its cost comes into view. The next verse names what this attraction conceals: the dead are already there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that pleasure made sweeter by secrecy must be harmless; the next line exposes the death hidden behind it.
THE ROOT
סְתָרִים
setarim
GROWS FROM
סתר
s-t-r
To hide or conceal.
“secret” in this verse is setarim. The Hebrew calls it bread of concealments, putting secrecy directly into the description of the meal. The concealment is not incidental scenery; it surrounds what is being enjoyed.
ALSO GROWS
seter: A hiding place or secret place.
סֵתֶר
The root makes the hidden location of the bread visible beneath the English phrase “in secret.”
histir: To hide or conceal.
הִסְתִּיר
This verb shows the same root at work as an act of covering something from view.
גְּנוּבִים
genuvim
GROWS FROM
גנב
g-n-b
To steal or take secretly.
“Stolen” and “in secret” echo each other: the water is taken, and the bread is concealed. The paired words make secrecy part of the pattern of the pleasure, not just a detail about where it happens.
ALSO GROWS
ganav: A thief.
גַּנָּב
The same root names the one who takes what is not openly theirs.
genevah: Theft or a stolen thing.
גְּנֵבָה
This noun carries the act of taking into the same word-family as the stolen water.
יִנְעָם
yin'am
GROWS FROM
נעם
n-'-m
To be pleasant, delightful, or agreeable.
“pleasant” in this verse is yin'am. The bread is presented as something delightful, which helps explain the pull of the concealed meal. The root also appears in words for pleasantness and in the name Naomi, making delight a quality woven into the word-family.
ALSO GROWS
no'am: Pleasantness or delight.
נֹעַם
This noun gives the quality that the verse says the hidden bread seems to have.
Naomi: A name associated with pleasantness.
נָעֳמִי
The name carries the same root of pleasantness, showing how the root can describe a nature as well as an experience.
THE PATTERN
Concealment can intensify the attraction of a forbidden gain while making its cost harder to see.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;THE THREAD
But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.The next line unveils what the hidden meal conceals: its guests are already among the dead. The sweetness of verse 17 is therefore shown beside an end the guest does not perceive.
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