What Does Proverbs 11:10 Mean?
When it goes well with the aligned, the city leaps, and when the wicked perish, there is a ringing cry.
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
When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.THE KEY
The city’s joy shows that when the aligned flourish and the wicked perish, neither event stays private.
THE MEANING
When the aligned flourish, the city rejoices with them; their good reaches into the shared life around them. When the wicked perish, the city answers with a shout, making their end a public event.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that righteousness is only a private virtue, with no effect on a community, or that the wicked can perish without changing what the city feels.
THE ROOT
אֲבֹד
ʾābad
GROWS FROM
אבד
Perish, be lost, lose the way.
The root behind “perish” also carries the sense of being lost. The verse sets the wicked’s perishing alongside the flourishing of the aligned, so the city’s shout responds to a change in what shapes its shared life.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: To perish or be lost.
אָבַד
This verb is the seed of the verse’s word for “perish,” keeping loss visible beneath the English rendering.
ʾavaddon: Destruction.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related word makes the root’s movement toward ruin explicit.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
Be right, just, aligned.
“Righteous” carries the root’s sense of alignment and rightness. Here that alignment is not sealed inside one person: when the aligned flourish, the whole city rejoices.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Rightness, justice.
צֶדֶק
This branch shows that the righteousness in the verse belongs to a wider order of justice.
tsedaqah: Righteousness, alignment.
צְדָקָה
This branch echoes the verse’s picture of rightness flourishing in public life.
THE PATTERN
Shared joy rises when alignment flourishes in public life and destructive power comes to an end.
When the aligned are many, the people rejoice; but when the restless rule, the people groan.And Mordecai went out from the face of the king in garments of kingship, blue and white, with a great crown of gold, and a garment of fine linen and purple. And the city of Shushan shouted and was glad.And there was great joy in that city.THE THREAD
You rebuke the nations; you make the wicked lose the way; you wipe out their name for the ages and ages.The Hebrew root אבד (ʾābad, perish or be lost) sits beneath Proverbs’ “perish” and Psalm’s “destroyed.” Psalm 9 makes the ending more visible: the wicked’s name is put out, showing why their perishing changes the city’s shared voice.
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