What Does Proverbs 25:17 Mean?
Draw your foot back from your neighbor's house, lest he be filled with you and hate you.
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
Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour’s house; lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee.THE KEY
The word behind “withdraw” also means “make precious”: measured presence can keep a visit welcome.
THE MEANING
Your presence in another person’s home has weight. The verse names a relational limit: even welcome can become weariness when someone is overfilled by another’s company. Space lets closeness remain welcome.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that constant access proves closeness: too much presence can crowd welcome into aversion.
THE ROOT
הֹקַר
hōqar
GROWS FROM
יקר
To be precious, costly, or rare; in this form, to make precious or rare.
“Draw your foot back” in this verse is hōqar. The Hebrew verb behind “withdraw” comes from יקר (y-q-r), meaning “to be precious or rare.” The image is of making your visits less frequent, so your presence remains valued and welcome.
ALSO GROWS
yāqār: Precious, costly, rare.
יָקָר
It shares the root that gives “withdraw” its added sense of making one’s presence rare and valued.
hôqîr: To value, esteem, or treat as precious.
הוֹקִיר
This verb makes the root’s link between rarity and regard explicit.
יִשְׂבָּעֲךָ
yisbaʿakha
GROWS FROM
שבע
To be full or sated.
“filled with you” in this verse is yisbaʿakha. Beneath “weary” is the image of being filled up or sated by someone. The verse describes a limit reached through too much presence, when a neighbor has had their fill and welcome gives way to aversion.
ALSO GROWS
śāvēaʿ: Full, satisfied, sated.
שָׂבֵעַ
It shows the fullness behind the warning that a neighbor may have their fill of someone’s company.
śōvaʿ: Fullness, satiety.
שֹׂבַע
It makes the relational image concrete: too many visits can fill up the room left for welcome.
THE PATTERN
Relational welcome lasts when closeness leaves room for the other person’s capacity and timing.
A time to hurl stones away, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to keep far from embracing.He who blesses his friend in a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it is reckoned to him as a curse.And as you wish people would do to you, do the same to them.THE THREAD
And the child Samuel attended the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days, and no vision broke through.The verb behind “withdraw” comes from יקר (y-q-r), meaning “precious” or “rare”; the same root describes the LORD’s word as “precious” here. The shared root lets rarity and value meet: measured presence can remain treasured.
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