What Does Proverbs 24:13 Mean?
My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the honeycomb is sweet upon your palate.
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
My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste:THE KEY
The verse makes goodness something you can taste and know, not merely something you are told.
THE MEANING
Goodness meets you in what you can receive and recognize for yourself. Here, honey’s goodness and the comb’s sweetness arrive through the palate: the truth is immediate and embodied.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that goodness is only an abstract label, separate from what can be received and known.
THE ROOT
מָתוֹק
māṯôq
GROWS FROM
מתק
m-t-q
To be sweet, become sweet, or be pleasant.
This root can describe waters becoming sweet, so sweetness is more than a fixed label: it can name a change in what is experienced. Here, the honeycomb’s sweetness rests on the palate, making goodness immediate and tangible.
ALSO GROWS
vayimtəqû: “They became sweet” (Exodus 15:25).
וַיִּמְתְּקוּ
The same root describes water becoming sweet, showing sweetness as an experienced change.
mĕṯûqîm: “Sweeter” (Psalm 19:10).
מְתוּקִים
The same word-root compares instruction to honey and honeycomb, linking what is valued with what can be tasted.
טוֹב
ṭôḇ
GROWS FROM
טוב
ṭ-w-b
Good, beneficial, or pleasant.
This seed appears in forms that name both what is good and goodness itself. In this verse, “good” is not left as a judgment alone: honey is received as food, and its sweetness is known by taste.
ALSO GROWS
ṭûḇ: Goodness (Exodus 33:19).
טוּב
This noun carries the same root from a quality into the goodness that can be encountered.
ṭôḇāh: A good thing or goodness (Psalm 25:7).
טוֹבָה
This form shows the same root naming goodness as something present and experienced.
THE PATTERN
What is good becomes known through direct reception, as tasting turns an abstract claim into lived perception.
O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.Pleasant words are like a dripping honeycomb, sweet to the living soul and healing to the bones.If indeed you have tasted that the LORD is good.THE THREAD
O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.Both verses use טוֹב (ṭôḇ, good) alongside the language of tasting. Proverbs places goodness and sweetness on the palate; Psalm 34:8 extends that same root into a call to taste and see goodness.
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