What Does Proverbs 20:15 Mean?
There is gold, and a multitude of rubies, but the lips of knowledge are a weighty vessel.
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
There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.THE KEY
The image reaches beyond a jewel: the lips become a vessel of value because they carry knowledge.
THE MEANING
Gold and many gems can be present, yet lips carrying knowledge are precious in their own way. What you speak can hold the worth of knowing that has been perceived and encountered, not merely collected as information.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what can be owned is the clearest measure of worth loosens here: lips bearing knowledge are also called a vessel of value.
THE ROOT
דַּעַת
daʿat
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, perceive, or recognize through encounter.
The English word “knowledge” can sound like information stored in the mind. דַּעַת grows from יָדַע, the verb for knowing and perceiving; here that knowing reaches the lips and becomes speech.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: To know or perceive.
יָדַע
This verb is the seed beneath דַּעַת, linking the verse’s knowledge to lived perception.
deʿah: Knowledge or understanding.
דֵּעָה
This related form shows the same root extending from the act of knowing into what is understood.
שִׂפְתֵי
siftei
GROWS FROM
שפה
Lip or edge; the boundary where speech emerges.
שָׂפָה can name a lip, an edge, or a shore. “Lips of knowledge” gives knowing a boundary where what is within reaches another person as speech.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip or edge.
שָׂפָה
The word pictures speech at the edge of the person, where inner knowing becomes audible.
sefat hayam: Shore, literally “lip of the sea.”
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
The same image of an edge helps show the lips as the place where what is held within meets the world.
כְּלִי יְקָר
keli yeqar
GROWS FROM
יקר
To be precious, costly, or valuable.
“weighty” in this verse is keli yeqar. The Hebrew image is a “vessel of value.” The familiar image of a jewel carries the preciousness, while vessel adds the sense of lips holding and carrying what is known.
ALSO GROWS
yaqar: Precious or costly.
יָקָר
It names the worth attributed to the lips that carry knowledge.
yeqar: Value or honor.
יְקָר
This related form makes the verse’s language of preciousness broader than an object’s price.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom carried in speech holds a worth that material abundance cannot measure.
For Wisdom is better than rubies, and all that you delight in cannot be set level with her.More longed for are they than gold, than much refined gold; sweeter than honey, and the dripping of the comb.A good human casts forth good things out of the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human casts forth evil things out of the evil treasure.THE THREAD
For the LORD gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and discernment.The Hebrew word דַּעַת, “knowledge,” appears in both verses. Proverbs 2:6 places knowledge at the source of speech; Proverbs 20:15 shows lips carrying that knowledge as a vessel of value.
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