What Does Proverbs 22:10 Mean?
Drive out the scorner, and strife goes out; contention and lightness come to rest.
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
Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease.THE KEY
The verse treats contention as something that can leave with the person who keeps it alive.
THE MEANING
When contempt sustains the quarrel, the scorner’s departure takes contention with it, and strife and reproach cease. The verse describes how removing that presence changes what can continue in the shared space.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that harmony can return while contempt keeps the quarrel alive.
THE ROOT
גָּרֵשׁ
gārēš
GROWS FROM
גרש
gimel
To drive out or expel.
“drive out” in this verse is gārēš. This root carries the force of expulsion: the scorner is sent out of the shared space. The verse then says contention itself goes out, linking the person’s removal with the quarrel’s departure.
ALSO GROWS
gerushah: A divorced woman; one sent away from a marriage.
גְּרוּשָׁה
The same root describes a formal separation, showing how sharply it can mark someone’s departure from a shared bond.
vegerashtiv: “And I will drive him out.”
וְגֵרַשְׁתִּיו
This form in Exodus 23:31 keeps the root’s concrete force of driving someone from a place.
יֵצֵא
yēṣēʾ
GROWS FROM
יצא
yod
To go out, come forth, or emerge.
“shall go out” in this verse is yēṣēʾ. The verse uses an exit image twice: first for the scorner being cast out, then for contention going out. The dispute is pictured as something that can leave the room along with the person sustaining it.
ALSO GROWS
yetzi’ah: Departure or going out.
יְצִיאָה
This noun makes the verse’s repeated movement outward visible: both the scorner and the contention depart.
motsa: An outlet, issue, or way out.
מוֹצָא
The root can name an outlet; here, the scorner’s departure opens an exit for the contention too.
יִשְׁבֹּת
yishbōt
GROWS FROM
שבת
shin
To cease or rest.
“come to rest” in this verse is yishbōt. The verse ends not with strife being defeated in a contest, but with it ceasing. This root also gives the word for Sabbath, joining the end of contention with the idea of rest.
ALSO GROWS
Shabbat: Sabbath; a day of cessation and rest.
שַׁבָּת
Its shared root lets the verse’s ending resonate with rest after strife stops.
shevitah: Cessation or stoppage.
שְׁבִיתָה
This form names the stopping itself, like the verse’s final movement from contention into quiet.
THE PATTERN
When the source or fuel of strife leaves the shared space, the strife loses its means to continue.
Without wood the fire goes out; without a whisperer the strife lies down.Is not all the land before your face? I pray you, part from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you go to the right hand, then I will go to the left.But those outside, God will judge. Lift out the wicked one from among yourselves.THE THREAD
So he drove out the man, and he pitched the cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and the flaming sword that turned every way would guard the way of the tree of life.“Drove out” translates the same Hebrew root, גרש (garash), as “cast out” here. The root connects the scorner’s expulsion with a much larger image of being sent beyond a boundary.
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