What Does Proverbs 23:5 Mean?
Will you make your eyes take flight upon what is not? For riches surely make wings for themselves, and they fly away like an eagle toward the heavens.
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
Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.THE KEY
The Hebrew makes your eyes fly toward wealth with the same verb it uses for wealth’s flight away.
THE MEANING
What your gaze calls secure is already vulnerable to leaving; wealth is pictured as taking wings and disappearing beyond your reach. Attention cannot make what is temporary stay. The verse meets you in the present moment of looking, where the thing that seems substantial is already in motion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that watching, possessing, or calculating wealth can make it permanent. Its disappearance is not proof that you failed to keep your eyes on it; the verse describes flight as part of its nature.
THE ROOT
תָּעִיף
taʿif
GROWS FROM
עוף
ʿûp̄
Fly, or move swiftly through the air; in this form, cause to fly.
“make your eyes take flight upon” in this verse is taʿif. The verb translated “set” shares the root עוף with “fly away” later in the verse: the Hebrew makes the eyes fly toward wealth before wealth itself takes flight. English separates attention from loss, while the Hebrew binds them through one motion.
ALSO GROWS
taʿif: Cause to fly; direct or set in motion.
תָּעִיף
This is the verb used of the eyes turning toward the object that is about to be gone.
yaʿuf: It flies.
יָעוּף
The same root names wealth’s departure, echoing the earlier motion of the eyes.
ʿof: A bird or flying creature.
עוֹף
The word for a flying creature grows from the same root as the flight repeated in the verse.
כְּנָפַיִם
kenafayim
GROWS FROM
כנף
kānāp̄
Wing; an outward edge or extremity.
“wings” in this verse is kenafayim. The Hebrew word can name both a wing and an edge or extremity. Here the image of an outward extension becomes the means by which wealth leaves the gaze.
ALSO GROWS
kanaph: Wing.
כָּנָף
This is the singular form behind the wings wealth takes in the verse.
kenaf: Edge, corner, or extremity, as of a garment.
כְּנַף
The related sense of an outer edge gives the wing image a feeling of something extending beyond the center.
THE PATTERN
What is gathered as possession cannot be made permanent; it can decay, pass away, or leave its holder.
For a store is not for the ages, and does the set-apart crown stand from generation to generation?For in his dying he takes nothing, and his weight does not go down after him.Do not store up for yourselves treasures upon the ground, where moth and rust gnaw them out of sight, and where thieves dig through and steal.THE THREAD
You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you on the wings of eagles, and brought you to myself.The same Hebrew word for “wings” (כָּנָף, kanaph) appears here: in Proverbs, wings carry wealth away; in Exodus, they carry a people toward God. The image turns on what the wings bear.
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