What Does Proverbs 14:1 Mean?
Every wise woman builds her house, but folly tears it down with her hands.
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
Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.THE KEY
The verse makes wisdom a building craft and folly the hands dismantling their own dwelling.
THE MEANING
The house reaches beyond walls to the shared life and family you inhabit. Wisdom takes visible form as building; folly takes visible form as hands pulling that shelter apart. The verse places the life within the house and the house itself in the same field of care.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a home is undone only by what comes from outside dissolves here: the verse locates its dismantling in the hands within it.
THE ROOT
חָכְמוֹת
ḥokhmot
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
To be wise or skillful; wisdom expressed as practiced competence.
“wise woman” in this verse is ḥokhmot. The word for wise comes from a root also used for skilled makers, including those who make the tabernacle. Wisdom here is competence that takes material form: it builds.
ALSO GROWS
ḥokhmāh: Wisdom
חָכְמָה
The same root names the capacity that guides both sound judgment and skilled making.
ḥākām: A wise or skillful person
חָכָם
The word can describe practical skill, joining wisdom to the hands that make and shape.
בָּנְתָה
bānetāh
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
To build, establish, or construct.
“builds” in this verse is bānetāh. The related word בֵּן (ben, son) is commonly connected to this root, extending the image of building toward a household’s continuing generations. The word for house, בַּיִת (bayit, house or household), can hold both the dwelling and the family within it.
ALSO GROWS
binyan: Building or structure
בִּנְיָן
This noun makes the root’s constructive force visible in the structure that gives a household shelter.
ben: Son
בֵּן
Commonly related to the root for building, it carries the image of a household continuing through its generations.
תֶּהֶרְסֶנּוּ
teharsennu
GROWS FROM
הרס
h-r-s
To tear down or demolish.
“tears it down” in this verse is teharsennu. This root gives folly a physical action: hands dismantle the very dwelling they inhabit. Its force is destruction carried out from within the house.
ALSO GROWS
hāras: To tear down or demolish
הָרַס
This is the verb at the heart of the verse’s image of a house being actively pulled apart.
harisah: Demolition or tearing down
הֲרִיסָה
The related noun names the dismantling as a process, matching the verse’s deliberate action.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling takes its shape from the wisdom expressed in its building, and its stability rests on what sustains it.
Through wisdom a house is built, and through discernment it is set firm.A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon the rock.THE THREAD
Through wisdom a house is built, and through discernment it is set firm.Proverbs 24:3 places חָכְמָה (ḥokhmāh, wisdom) beside יִבָּנֶה (yibbāneh, is built). That makes the wise woman’s building in Proverbs 14:1 wisdom taking physical form.
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