What Does Proverbs 24:29 Mean?
Do not say, "I will do to him as he has done to me; I will return to the man according to his deed."
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
Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work.THE KEY
Retaliation is a returned deed: the harm you send back still takes its shape from what first reached you.
THE MEANING
The verse names a live argument in the reader: he did this to me, so I will do it back. Hebrew repeats the root for “do,” making the proposed answer a mirror, and frames “render” as returning the deed. It exposes payback as imitation that takes its measure from the injury.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that returning an injury becomes just simply because it matches what was done to you.
THE ROOT
אָשִׁיב
ashiv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
To turn back, return.
“return” in this verse is ashiv. The word translated “render” comes from שׁוּב (shuv), the root of returning. The speaker imagines sending the deed back along the path it came from.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch carries the root’s motion of return, which the verse places inside the speaker’s proposed payback.
heshiv: To bring back, restore, return.
הֵשִׁיב
Proverbs 24:12 uses this same root for “render”; there, the verse attributes the return according to a person’s work to God.
עָשָׂה
asah
GROWS FROM
עשה
To do, make, act.
The Hebrew repeats עשה (asah): he did to me, I will do to him. That repetition makes retaliation an imitation, with the first act supplying the pattern for the second.
ALSO GROWS
ma'aseh: Deed, act, work.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun grows from the same root and shows how an action becomes a deed that can be named and returned.
asiyah: Doing, action.
עֲשִׂיָּה
The branch keeps the root’s sense of acting, echoing the verse’s repeated movement from what one person does to what the other proposes to do.
THE PATTERN
Retaliation copies the harm received, while wisdom refuses to let that harm set the measure of what comes next.
You shall not avenge, nor hold a grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.Do not say, I will repay the evil; stretch yourself taut toward the LORD, and he will bring you out.Give back to no one evil for evil. Look ahead to what is beautiful in the eyes of all people.THE THREAD
If you say, "Look, we did not know this," does not the one who weighs hearts separate it out? Does not the one who guards your living soul know it? Will he not return to each man according to his deed?The Hebrew word translated “render” in both verses comes from שׁוּב (shuv), meaning to return. Proverbs 24:12 attributes the return according to a person’s work to God, while Proverbs 24:29 places that language in the human voice of payback.
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