What Does Proverbs 22:14 Mean?
The mouth of strange women is a deep pit; the one the LORD rages against falls there.
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 mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein.THE KEY
Here, the mouth is already the pit: the invitation carries the descent inside it.
THE MEANING
This proverb presents seductive speech as a depth that can take the hearer down, and links the fall to being under the LORD’s indignation. The danger is pictured as already present in the mouth itself: the invitation bears the shape of the pit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a tempting voice is harmless because it is only words: here, the mouth itself is named as the pit.
THE ROOT
שׁוּחָה
shuchah
GROWS FROM
שׁוּח
sh-w-ḥ
To sink, sink down, or be brought low.
The Hebrew word for pit grows from a root of sinking and being lowered. The hollow is not just a container; its name carries the downward movement, and Proverbs 26:27 uses the same pit-word in a saying where the digger falls into it.
ALSO GROWS
shûaḥ: To sink or be brought low.
שׁוּחַ
This verbal form names the downward motion that the pit holds.
shuchah: A pit or hollow.
שׁוּחָה
The noun turns that sinking motion into the place the verse says a person falls into.
זְעוּם
zeʿûm
GROWS FROM
זעם
z-ʿ-m
To denounce or show indignation; indignation.
“rages against” in this verse is zeʿûm. Here, “abhorred” belongs to the indignation-word family: the phrase depicts someone under the LORD’s indignation, rather than merely someone deemed unlikeable. Its related forms name both being indignant and indignation itself, sharpening the verse’s causal statement.
ALSO GROWS
zoʿēm: Indignant or angry.
זֹעֵם
Psalm 7:11 uses this form for God’s anger toward the wicked, showing the force of the word family.
zaʿam: Indignation or displeasure.
זַעַם
Isaiah 26:20 uses this noun for indignation, giving the verse’s “abhorred” a sharper edge than personal dislike.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom depicts dangerous invitations and traps as openings that carry the descent and its consequences within them.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold of Sheol.They set a net for my steps; my living soul kneels. They dig a pit before my face, and into its midst they themselves fall. Selah.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.Proverbs 26:27 uses the same word שׁוּחָה (shuchah, “pit”) and the same root נפל (naphal, “fall”). There, the pit’s logic turns back on its digger, making the image here feel like more than a warning about a bad destination: the opening itself is already a descent.
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