What Does Proverbs 25:10 Mean?
Lest the one who hears it reproach you, and your bad report does not turn back.
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
Lest he that heareth it put thee to shame, and thine infamy turn not away.THE KEY
A secret turned into a report can leave its speaker carrying disgrace that does not turn back.
THE MEANING
Your handling of a private matter can itself become public knowledge: the hearer may shame you, and the disgrace may not recede. Once spoken into another’s hearing, a confidence can outlive the dispute that prompted it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that exposing a confidence is controllable: that once the point is made, the story can be called back and the speaker can leave untouched.
THE ROOT
דִּבָּה
dibbah
GROWS FROM
דבב
d-b-b
To move the lips or speak softly; in this noun, a whispering or slanderous report.
“bad report” in this verse is dibbah. English “infamy” can sound like an abstract reputation; דִּבָּה (dibbah, a slanderous report) is something carried through speech. Its relation to דּוֹבֵב (dovav, causing lips to speak) makes the movement from mouth to hearer tangible: the disgrace travels through words.
ALSO GROWS
dibbah: A whispering or slanderous report.
דִּבָּה
The disgrace in the verse is carried as a report that another person hears.
dovav: Causing lips to speak.
דּוֹבֵב
This branch gives speech a physical motion, tracing how a report leaves the speaker and reaches another.
תָשׁוּב
tashuv
GROWS FROM
שׁוב
sh-w-b
To turn, return, or go back.
The line pictures the disgrace as something that does not turn back or recede. The root holds both turning away and returning, giving force to the thought that a report set loose may be difficult to call back.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: To turn or return.
שׁוּב
This is the root action in the verse: the disgrace does not turn away.
meshubah: Turning away or backsliding.
מְשׁוּבָה
This branch shows the root’s other direction: turning away can mark a departure that persists.
teshuvah: Return or turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
The idea of return sharpens the verse’s image of disgrace that does not come back from where it has gone.
THE PATTERN
Words released into another person’s hearing can travel beyond the speaker’s control and carry consequences with them.
Do not curse the king, even in your knowledge, and do not curse the rich in the inner chambers of your bed, for the bird of the heavens carries the voice, and the winged one tells the word.Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken into the ear in the inner rooms will be cried out from the rooftops.Even so the tongue is a small limb, and it lifts its neck over great things. Look how great a forest a little fire kindles!THE THREAD
For I hear the whispering of many; terror is all around, as they sit down together against me, and plot to take my living soul.Psalm 31:13 uses the same דִּבָּה (dibbah, slanderous report) found in Proverbs 25:10. Together, the verses show a report moving from hearing into surrounding threat, and make the cost of speech feel immediate.
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