What Does Proverbs 13:23 Mean?
Much food lies in the broken ground of the emptied; there is one swept away for lack of judgment.
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
Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.THE KEY
The poor person’s tilled ground holds abundant food, yet without justice what is present remains vulnerable to being swept away.
THE MEANING
The ground you work can hold much food even when it belongs to someone called poor. But provision alone does not shield what is present: without justice, something is swept away. The verse lets abundance and vulnerability occupy the same field.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Poverty means the ground must be barren, and whatever abundance it yields will protect itself. The verse undoes both assumptions: food can be present, yet injustice can still destroy.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁפָּט
mishpat
GROWS FROM
שפט
sh-p-t
To judge, decide, and set matters in right order.
“judgment” in this verse is mishpat. Mishpat names justice and right ordering, not merely a private capacity to make sensible choices. The verse places destruction alongside the absence of justice: what is present can be lost when right order fails.
ALSO GROWS
shaphat: To judge or decide
שָׁפַט
The verb shows that mishpat is an enacted judgment, not an abstract idea.
shofet: A judge
שֹׁפֵט
The person who judges gives mishpat a human point of action: decisions shape whether people and what they possess are protected.
mishpatim: Judgments or ordinances
מִשְׁפָּטִים
The plural form shows mishpat can describe the concrete order that governs how people are treated.
נִיר
nir
GROWS FROM
ניר
n-y-r
To till or break up ground.
“broken ground” in this verse is nir. The word points to ground opened and worked, not simply land in the abstract. The verse holds poverty and yield together: ground associated with the poor can already contain much food.
ALSO GROWS
niru: Break up or plow
נִירוּ
This verbal form makes the field’s cultivation active: the ground is opened to receive seed.
nir: Tilled or fallow ground
נִיר
The noun names the worked ground where the verse locates abundant food.
נִסְפֶּה
nispah
GROWS FROM
ספה
s-p-h
To sweep away or destroy.
“swept away” in this verse is nispah. The word pictures removal: something is swept out of the scene. The verse has already named much food, so its loss is not simply the absence of a harvest; what exists can still be destroyed.
ALSO GROWS
nispah: Be swept away or perish
נִסְפֶּה
This is the form used for what is destroyed in the verse.
tispeh: Sweep away or destroy
תִּסְפֶּה
The same root appears in Genesis 18:23, where Abraham asks whether the righteous will be swept away with the wicked.
THE PATTERN
Abundance can grow in worked ground, yet it remains vulnerable when justice fails to protect what is there.
The one who serves his ground is sated with bread, but the one who pursues empty things lacks heart.For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah the planting of his delight. He waited for judgment, but behold, spilled blood. He waited for alignment, but behold, a cry.And one of you says to them, Go in wholeness, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them what the body needs. What is the profit?THE THREAD
For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah the planting of his delight. He waited for judgment, but behold, spilled blood. He waited for alignment, but behold, a cry.Isaiah uses the same מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, justice) beside a vineyard, where oppression grows in place of the expected fruit. Together, the verses show that a field’s yield and the treatment of vulnerable people belong to the same picture of what is produced.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us