What Does Proverbs 14:23 Mean?
In all toil there is a remainder, but the word of the lips only bends toward lack.
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
In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.THE KEY
The same verse places surplus on the far side of effort and lack on the far side of words that stay at the lips.
THE MEANING
Your effort leaves something beyond the exertion itself. Speech that stays only at the lips tends toward lack, so the verse distinguishes what is said from what takes form.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that talking about a thing is the same as producing it: lips alone do not leave the surplus that labor yields.
THE ROOT
עֶצֶב
etsev
GROWS FROM
עצב
ʿ-ṣ-b
Toil, pain, and grief, the strain of exertion.
“toil” in this verse is etsev. The same seed names labor that hurts and the experience of being grieved: this is effort with a real cost. Yet the verse says that effort can yield a remainder, so its cost is not its only result.
ALSO GROWS
ʿiṣṣāvōn: Painful toil, sorrow
עִצָּבוֹן
This related form shows the strain carried in the verse’s word for labour.
vayyitʿatsev: He was grieved
וַיִּתְעַצֵּב
The same root’s movement from toil to grief reveals the pain held within exertion.
מוֹתָר
motar
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
To remain or be left over; hence, surplus.
“remainder” in this verse is motar. “Profit” here is what remains after the labor: an excess, not just the effort itself. The word’s root keeps the focus on what is left over.
ALSO GROWS
yoter: More, additional, remaining
יוֹתֵר
This form makes the surplus in the verse concrete: there is something left beyond what was spent.
yitron: Advantage, gain
יִתְרוֹן
This related noun shows the lasting gain that can remain after effort.
מַחְסוֹר
machsor
GROWS FROM
חסר
ḥ-s-r
To lack, be short, or be diminished.
The verse’s final word points to something missing, not merely a small amount. Set against surplus, it gives the contrast a sharp shape: one side leaves something over, while the other leaves a lack.
ALSO GROWS
ḥaser: Lacking, short
חָסֵר
The verb names the condition behind penury: something is missing.
ḥesron: Deficiency, loss
חֶסְרוֹן
This related noun makes clear that lack is a deficit, the opposite of what remains.
THE PATTERN
Labor leaves a remainder, while words without embodied work leave only lack.
The one who works with a slack hand grows poor; but the hand that digs makes rich.A dream comes with a throng of tasks, and the voice of the thick-headed comes with a throng of words.So also trust, if it has no works, is dead, by itself.THE THREAD
And to the ground-being, Adam, he said, Because you have heard and responded to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground for your sake; in pain you shall eat from it all the days of your life.The word translated “sorrow” is עִצָּבוֹן (ʿiṣṣāvōn), painful toil or sorrow, from the same root as “labour” here. Proverbs shows that this costly exertion can still leave מוֹתָר (motar), a surplus; the strain is not the whole story.
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