What Does Proverbs 18:20 Mean?
A man's belly is filled with the fruit of his mouth, and with the yield of his lips he is filled.
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’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled.THE KEY
The harvest of your words feeds the person who speaks them before it reaches anyone else.
THE MEANING
What your mouth brings forth becomes nourishment within you; your speech feeds your own inner life as well as entering the world around you. The Hebrew repeats the same verb for being satisfied, linking the belly’s fullness directly to the yield of the lips.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that your words affect only other people: what you say also becomes part of what fills you.
THE ROOT
שָׂבַע
savaʿ
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
ś-b-ʿ
To be sated or filled.
The belly’s “satisfied” and the lips’ “filled” are forms of the same Hebrew root, שׂבע (savaʿ). English varies the wording, while Hebrew ties inner fullness to the yield of speech: what comes from your mouth returns as your own fullness.
ALSO GROWS
sovaʿ: Satiety, fullness, abundance.
שֹׂבַע
This noun makes the verse’s outcome concrete: the yield of speech becomes a state of fullness.
saveaʿ: Sated, full.
שָׂבֵעַ
This form describes one who has been filled, echoing the verse’s picture of the speaker receiving the result of what the lips produce.
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פרה
p-r-h
To bear fruit, be fruitful, or multiply.
Fruit is the yield of what has grown; here, the mouth itself bears it. The image makes speech productive: what the mouth brings forth becomes provision for the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit, be fruitful.
פָּרָה
This verb reveals the growth hidden beneath “fruit”: speech is pictured as something the mouth bears.
peri: Fruit, produce.
פְּרִי
The noun names the result of that bearing, which the verse pictures as returning to nourish the speaker.
THE PATTERN
Speech produces a yield that returns to the speaker as nourishment or consequence.
A man is filled with good from the fruit of his mouth, and the recompense of a man's hands returns to him.Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.For by your words you will be made aligned, and by your words you will be condemned.THE THREAD
A man is filled with good from the fruit of his mouth, and the recompense of a man's hands returns to him.This verse repeats the same Hebrew root שׂבע (savaʿ, to be satisfied) alongside “the fruit of his mouth.” The shared root and image reveal that the mouth’s yield does not stop at the listener; it becomes fullness for the speaker.
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