What Does Proverbs 1:6 Mean?
To discern a proverb and its turned saying, the words of the wise and their enfolded riddles.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.THE KEY
A proverb and a riddle both make discernment part of how wisdom reaches you.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you as someone capable of discerning layered meaning. A proverb compresses insight into a saying, while a riddle leaves meaning to be perceived beneath its first surface. Wisdom reaches you through words that invite understanding.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Meaning is not necessarily absent when a saying feels obscure; some wisdom is carried in a form that calls for discernment.
THE ROOT
לְהָבִין
lehavin
GROWS FROM
בין
b-y-n
To distinguish or discern; hence, to understand.
“discern” in this verse is lehavin. The Hebrew word for “understand” carries the sense of discerning distinctions and relations. That makes the proverb, its interpretation, and the riddle exercises in perception: meaning opens as you see how the words fit together.
ALSO GROWS
binah: Understanding; discernment.
בִּינָה
This names the faculty the verse calls into action: perceiving distinctions and relations in a saying.
mevin: One who understands or discerns.
מֵבִין
The same root describes a person who perceives how words and ideas fit together.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom often comes in compressed speech whose meaning opens through discernment.
The weight of God is to hide a matter; the weight of kings is to search out a matter.I will open my mouth in a likeness, and pour out riddles of old.And he said to them, To you it has been given to know the mystery of the governance of God, but to those outside, all things come to be in parables.THE THREAD
Then you discern the awe of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.Proverbs 2:5 repeats the root behind “understand,” connecting the discernment of layered sayings with perceiving the awe of the LORD. The same understanding reaches beyond words to a living perception of God.
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