What Does Proverbs 10:31 Mean?
The mouth of the aligned buds forth wisdom; but the tongue of twistings is cut off.
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
The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom: but the froward tongue shall be cut out.THE KEY
Wisdom sprouts from an aligned mouth, while speech that overturns words is cut away.
THE MEANING
Wisdom grows from your mouth when it is aligned, arriving as fruit rather than fabrication. Speech that turns words inside out meets a hard limit: the verse says that tongue is cut off.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a tongue can twist words endlessly without consequence dissolves here: the verse says it is cut off.
THE ROOT
יָנוּב
yanub
GROWS FROM
נוב
To sprout, produce, or bear fruit.
“buds forth” in this verse is yanub. The verb carries the image of growth: wisdom comes from the mouth like fruit from a living plant. The related phrase “fruit of the lips” shows speech itself as a harvest, not just sound.
ALSO GROWS
niv: Fruit or utterance, as in “fruit of the lips.”
נִיב
Isaiah’s image of lip-fruit makes visible the same link this verse makes between speech and what grows from it.
yenubun: They bring forth fruit.
יְנוּבוּן
Psalm 92:14 uses this form for continued fruit-bearing, extending the verse’s image of wisdom as something living that grows.
תַּהְפֻּכוֹת
tahpukot
GROWS FROM
הפך
To turn, overturn, or reverse.
“twistings” in this verse is tahpukot. The word describes reversals or distortions, more than a general tendency to be difficult. The tongue is marked by the way it turns words around, and the verse sets that twisting against wisdom that grows straight from alignment.
ALSO GROWS
haphak: To turn or overturn.
הָפַךְ
This verb gives “froward” its motion: the tongue turns things around rather than letting them stand true.
mahpekah: Overthrow or overturning.
מַהְפֵּכָה
The related noun carries the force of overturning, showing the disruptive edge inside the verse’s description of the tongue.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
To be right or just; alignment.
“aligned” in this verse is tsaddiq. “Just” carries an orientation of alignment, not only a moral label. The verse links that alignment to speech that yields wisdom as its natural fruit.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice or rightness.
צֶדֶק
This branch names the quality of what is aligned, the source from which the mouth’s wisdom comes.
tsedaqah: Justice or right conduct.
צְדָקָה
The related form keeps the focus on alignment expressed in action, echoed here in speech that produces wisdom.
THE PATTERN
Speech is living output: alignment gives rise to wisdom, while twisted speech meets a limit.
The mouth of the aligned one murmurs wisdom, and his tongue speaks judgment.I create the fruit of the lips. Wholeness, wholeness to the one far off and to the one near, says the LORD, and I will heal him.Out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and curse. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.THE THREAD
Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.Both verses use לָשׁוֹן (lashon, tongue) and show speech producing an outcome. Here, wisdom sprouts from one kind of mouth while the overturning tongue is cut off; there, the tongue holds death and life.
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