What Does Proverbs 13:2 Mean?
From the fruit of his mouth a man eats good; the living soul of the treacherous eats violence.
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 eat good by the fruit of his mouth: but the soul of the transgressors shall eat violence.THE KEY
The verse turns speech into food: what your mouth bears becomes nourishment, while betrayal’s appetite is violence.
THE MEANING
Your mouth’s fruit does not remain outside you; it becomes what your life feeds on. The living self of betrayal is pictured as violence, binding what a person gives out to what that person consumes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that words leave the speaker untouched: the mouth’s fruit becomes nourishment within the speaker’s own life.
THE ROOT
פְּרִי
perî
GROWS FROM
פרה
To bear fruit, to be fruitful.
The root ties fruit to what is produced, while the verse’s image of eating turns that production back into nourishment. What comes from the mouth becomes part of what the life takes in.
ALSO GROWS
perî: Fruit; produce.
פְּרִי
This is the word in the verse: speech has produce that can be consumed.
pārâ: To bear fruit, to become fruitful.
פָּרָה
The verb shows that fruit is the result of bearing or producing, not a decoration added afterward.
Efrayim: Ephraim; a name associated with fruitfulness.
אֶפְרַיִם
The name preserves the same fruit-bearing root, showing how the root can name a life by what it produces.
נֶפֶשׁ
nephesh
GROWS FROM
נפש
The living self, including its appetite and desire.
“living soul” in this verse is nephesh. English “soul” can sound abstract, but nephesh names the living self, including its appetite. Here that living appetite is associated with what it consumes: violence.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul, person, or life.
נֶפֶשׁ
The verse locates the consequence in the living self, not in an abstract inner part.
nephesh: Appetite or desire.
נֶפֶשׁ
This sense makes the image of eating vivid: the treacherous person’s appetite takes violence as food.
naphash: To recover or be refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
This related form also concerns the condition of the living self; here the contrast is between what refreshes life and what feeds it violence.
בֹּגְדִים
bogdîm
GROWS FROM
בגד
To betray or deal treacherously.
“the treacherous” in this verse is bogdîm. The Hebrew word points toward betrayal and broken trust, giving “transgressors” a more specific shape. The verse links that way of dealing with others to an appetite for violence.
ALSO GROWS
bāgad: To betray or act treacherously.
בָּגַד
The verb names the action behind the people described in the verse.
bogēd: A betrayer; one who acts treacherously.
בֹּגֵד
This form names a person by the betrayal they enact, which the verse pairs with violence as their food.
THE PATTERN
What a person produces returns as nourishment and consequence within that person’s life.
A man is filled with good from the fruit of his mouth, and the recompense of a man's hands returns to him.A man's belly is filled with the fruit of his mouth, and with the yield of his lips he is filled.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.This verse repeats the Hebrew phrase “from the fruit of a man’s mouth,” then expands the meal image: the belly is satisfied and the lips’ increase fills the speaker. The shared word פְּרִי (perî, fruit) sharpens Proverbs 13:2’s contrast between speech that nourishes and betrayal’s appetite for violence.
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