What Does Proverbs 20:29 Mean?
The adornment of young men is their strength, and the beauty of old men is gray hair.
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
The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.THE KEY
Strength adorns youth and gray hair adorns age: the verse gives each season its own splendor.
THE MEANING
Your worth is not held to one season of life. Strength gives youth its distinction; the gray head gives age its own beauty, so splendor changes form without disappearing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that your value fades when your strength fades dissolves here: the verse names the gray head as beauty, not as lost worth.
THE ROOT
תִּפְאֶרֶת
tif'eret
GROWS FROM
פאר
To adorn, beautify, or bring splendor.
The word translated “glory” belongs to the language of adornment. Strength is youth’s adornment, while the verse gives age its own distinct beauty.
ALSO GROWS
pa'ar: To adorn, beautify, or glorify.
פָּאַר
The verb shows that glory carries the sense of being adorned, not only possessing status.
pe'er: An adornment or headdress.
פְּאֵר
This concrete form of the root makes the verse’s glory feel like visible splendor rather than an abstract prize.
הֲדַר
hadar
GROWS FROM
הדר
Splendor, honor, or adornment; as a verb, to honor.
The word for the gray head’s beauty also carries the sense of honor. The same root appears in a command to honor the face of an old person, linking age’s visible sign with dignity.
ALSO GROWS
hadar: Splendor or majesty.
הָדָר
This noun names the elder’s gray head as a form of splendor.
vehadarta: You shall honor.
וְהָדַרְתָּ
Leviticus 19:32 uses this related form for honoring the face of an old person, echoing the dignity this verse gives age.
THE PATTERN
Each season of life bears its own honor and fruit; neither youth nor age monopolizes human worth.
A gray head is a crown of splendor, when it is found on the way of alignment.They still bear fruit in gray hair; they are fat and green.Let no one look down on your youth, but become an imprint of the steady ones, in word, in how you walk, in love, in breath, in trust, in cleanness.THE THREAD
Even to old age I AM, and to gray hair I will bear you. I have made, and I will lift, I will bear, and I will slip you free.Isaiah uses the same word, שֵׂיבָה (seivah), meaning old age or gray hair, rendered here as “hoar hairs.” Proverbs names that sign of age as beauty; Isaiah describes it as a season still carried.
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