What Does Proverbs 13:14 Mean?
The instruction of the wise is a spring of life, to turn aside from the snares of death.
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 law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.THE KEY
The wise person’s instruction is a spring that gives life by pointing you away from death’s traps.
THE MEANING
Wise instruction reaches you as a source of life and direction. It lets you turn aside from traps that close toward death. Life appears here as a path that stays open when the deadly snare is left behind.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that instruction exists only to restrict life. This verse presents the wise person’s teaching as a life-source that leads away from death’s traps.
THE ROOT
תּוֹרַת
torat
GROWS FROM
ירה
ירה (yarah) carries the sense of pointing or directing, and also teaching or instructing; תּוֹרָה (torah) means instruction.
“law” in this verse is torat. The root carries a sense of direction alongside teaching. The wise person’s instruction points toward life and away from the snares of death.
ALSO GROWS
yarah: to point, direct, or teach
יָרָה
Its directional sense shows instruction as guidance along a path.
moreh: teacher; one who instructs
מוֹרֶה
The teacher gives direction that can lead away from danger.
לָסוּר
lasur
GROWS FROM
סור
סור (sur) means to turn aside, withdraw, or move away; its causative form can mean to remove or take away.
“turn aside” in this verse is lasur. The escape in this verse is a turn away from the snare. The same root can describe removal, linking departure with separation from what holds a person toward death.
ALSO GROWS
sur: to turn aside or withdraw
סוּר
This is the movement the verse names: turning away from the deadly trap.
hesir: to remove or take away
הֵסִיר
This form shows the root’s related sense of removing what stands in the way.
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
חיה (chayah) means to live, remain alive, or preserve life.
The phrase “fountain of life” ties חַיִּים to a living source, rather than life as a static possession. The root also includes preserving or restoring life, deepening the image of instruction as a source that sustains the way out of death’s traps.
ALSO GROWS
chai: living or alive
חַי
This branch names the living state the fountain sustains.
hecheyah: to revive or keep alive
הֶחֱיָה
It shows the root’s sense of preserving and restoring life.
THE PATTERN
Life flows from a source that guides people away from death’s traps.
The mouth of the aligned is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the restless.For with you is the spring of life; in your light we see light.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
The mouth of the aligned is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the restless.This verse uses the same Hebrew phrase, מְקוֹר חַיִּים (maqor chayyim), “source of life,” found in Proverbs 13:14. One places that source in wise instruction; the other locates it in the righteous person’s mouth.
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