What Does Proverbs 18:3 Mean?
When the wicked comes, contempt comes too, and with lightness comes reproach.
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
When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt, and with ignominy reproach.THE KEY
Wickedness carries its own company: contempt arrives beside it, and disgrace makes room for reproach.
THE MEANING
When wickedness enters the reader’s life, contempt comes with it; disgrace is accompanied by reproach. The verse presents these as joined consequences, not unrelated misfortunes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that contempt and disgrace have nothing to do with how a person lives: here, they arrive in the company of wickedness.
THE ROOT
חֶרְפָּה
ḥerpah
GROWS FROM
חרף
To reproach, taunt, or revile.
The noun for reproach shares its root with the verb for taunting: this disgrace is not merely an inward feeling, but shame bound up with scorn. The closing pair tightens the image: ignominy and reproach arrive together, joining dishonor with the voice that exposes it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāraph: To reproach, taunt, or defy.
חָרַף
The verb shows the action contained in the verse’s noun: reproach can be spoken and aimed.
ḥerpah: Reproach, disgrace, or shame.
חֶרְפָּה
This noun names the dishonor that accompanies wickedness in the verse.
בָּא
bāʾ
GROWS FROM
בוא
To come, enter, or arrive.
“cometh” in this verse is bāʾ. The verse repeats this root: בְּבֹא (when wickedness comes), then בָּא (contempt comes). The shared motion binds the two arrivals together, making contempt a companion that enters in wickedness’s wake.
ALSO GROWS
boʾ: To come or enter.
בּוֹא
This verbal form carries the same arrival that frames wickedness and contempt in the verse.
māvoʾ: Entrance or entryway.
מָבוֹא
This noun from the same root gives arrival a threshold: what comes has entered.
THE PATTERN
Destructive conduct brings shame and disgrace in its company.
When boiling comes, then shame comes, but wisdom is with the lowly.What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.THE THREAD
Whom have you taunted and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice, and lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Set-Apart One of Israel.The Hebrew behind “reproached” shares the root חרף with the reproach named in Proverbs. Here reproach comes alongside ignominy; in Isaiah, the same root appears as a direct act of taunting.
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