What Does Proverbs 13:11 Mean?
Wealth from breath shrinks; the one who gathers by hand grows.
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
Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.THE KEY
The dividing line is not rich versus poor, but vapor versus what is gathered by hand.
THE MEANING
You meet two kinds of wealth here: what comes from hevel, vaporous emptiness, dwindles; what is gathered steadily grows. The verse makes substance part of increase itself: what cannot hold its shape fades, while what is gathered becomes more.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that visible wealth is already secure. The verse says its source matters: wealth born of vapor can still diminish.
THE ROOT
הֶבֶל
hevel
GROWS FROM
הבל
h-b-l
Vaporousness, emptiness; to be vain or insubstantial.
“breath” in this verse is hevel. Hevel is the word for vapor: something that appears, then cannot be held. The weakness of this wealth is in its quality from the start; the verse describes not only its decrease, but its lack of substance.
ALSO GROWS
hevel: Vapor; vanity or something fleeting.
הֶבֶל
This is the verse’s own word, making vapor the image beneath “vanity.”
haval: To act emptily or become futile.
הָבַל
The verbal form carries the same sense of emptiness that makes vaporous wealth unable to endure.
קֹבֵץ
qovets
GROWS FROM
קבץ
q-b-ts
To gather or collect into one.
“gathers” in this verse is qovets. The KJV says “by labour”; the Hebrew image also places the gathering עַל־יָד (ʿal-yad, “upon or by the hand”). The increase is pictured as tangible gathering, one handful at a time.
ALSO GROWS
qibbuts: A gathering or collection.
קִבּוּץ
It keeps the same root sense of bringing separate things together.
qevutsah: A group or gathered collection.
קְבוּצָה
The gathered whole takes shape through the same act that the verse describes.
יַרְבֶּה
yarbeh
GROWS FROM
רבה
r-b-h
To become many, multiply, or grow abundant.
“grows” in this verse is yarbeh. Increase here is becoming many, not merely appearing larger. Set beside the handful gathered at a time, the root shows abundance forming through accumulation.
ALSO GROWS
rav: Much or many.
רַב
It names the abundance toward which repeated gathering grows.
rabbim: Many.
רַבִּים
The plural form makes visible the multiplication contained in “increase.”
THE PATTERN
What is steadily gathered or sown can multiply, while gain without substance thins away.
The one who works with a slack hand grows poor; but the hand that digs makes rich.Send your bread upon the face of the waters, for in the abundance of days you find it.But this I say, the one who sows in holding back reaps in holding back, and the one who sows in blessings reaps in blessings.THE THREAD
Vapor of vapors, says the assembler. Vapor of vapors. All is vapor.“Vanity” here translates הֶבֶל (hevel), the same word in Proverbs 13:11: vapor, something fleeting and insubstantial. That shared root reveals why wealth “from vanity” dwindles: its source already carries the quality of what cannot last.
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