What Does Proverbs 12:14 Mean?
A man is filled with good from the fruit of his mouth, and the recompense of a man's hands returns to him.
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
A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth: and the recompence of a man’s hands shall be rendered unto him.THE KEY
Your words and your work both produce a yield that returns to shape your life.
THE MEANING
Your mouth bears fruit that satisfies you with good. The work of your hands also returns to you as recompense, so what you produce in speech and action enters your life again.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that words are weightless and only physical actions have consequences: the mouth bears fruit too.
THE ROOT
גְּמוּל
gemul
GROWS FROM
גמל
g-m-l
To deal with or requite; also to bring to maturity.
“recompense” in this verse is gemul. The word translated “recompence” is gemul, from a root that includes dealing with or requiting and bringing to maturity. Beside “rendered,” from the separate root שוב (shuv, return), it depicts the hands’ work as a completed yield that comes back to its maker.
ALSO GROWS
gamal: To deal with, requite, or bring to maturity.
גָּמַל
The root’s range links the recompense to what the work has grown into and brings forth.
gemul: Treatment, deed, or recompense.
גְּמוּל
This is the word in the verse: what the hands have dealt out becomes what is returned.
יָשִׁיב
yashiv
GROWS FROM
שוב
shuv
To turn back or return.
The verb says the recompense returns to the person. English can make “rendered unto him” sound like a detached payment; this root gives the clause a turning motion, bringing the work back toward its maker.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: To turn back or return.
שׁוּב
This is the root’s basic movement, echoed in the return of the hands’ work.
teshuvah: Return or turning.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch keeps the same motion of turning back, making the verse’s return concrete.
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פרה
parah
To bear fruit or be fruitful.
The Hebrew word for fruit belongs to the verb for bearing fruit. The mouth is pictured as productive: its words are a yield with substance, paired here with the completed work of the hands.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit or be fruitful.
פָּרָה
The verb reveals that the mouth’s “fruit” is something produced, not merely a figure of speech.
peri: Fruit or produce.
פְּרִי
This is the word in the verse: speech has a yield that can satisfy with good.
THE PATTERN
What a person brings forth in speech and work becomes a yield in that person’s life.
A man's belly is filled with the fruit of his mouth, and with the yield of his lips he is filled.For you eat the weariness of your palms; flourishing is yours, and goodness is yours.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
A man's belly is filled with the fruit of his mouth, and with the yield of his lips he is filled.The same Hebrew root for “satisfied” appears alongside “fruit of his mouth,” making speech’s yield something that fills a person. This verse pairs that mouth-produced fruit with what the hands produce and what returns to their maker.
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