What Does Proverbs 25:27 Mean?
It is not good to eat much honey, and to search out their weight is not weight.
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
It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory.THE KEY
The word for glory carries the sense of weight: searching for your own honor cannot make it substantial.
THE MEANING
Honey’s sweetness does not make excess good; the verse applies that same limit to self-regard. When you keep examining and pursuing your own honor, the pursuit cannot give it substance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that continued self-promotion produces real significance: recognition hunted for its own sake can leave honor hollow.
THE ROOT
כְּבֹדָם
kevodam
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy, to carry weight.
The word rendered “glory” carries the sense of weight. The verse repeats it as it speaks of searching for one’s own honor, making the question not just whether honor is claimed, but whether that pursuit gives it substance.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy; weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the root’s image of weight visible beneath the verse’s language of glory.
kibbed: To honor, to treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
Honor is connected to giving someone weight, while the verse questions what self-seeking can make weighty.
חֵקֶר
cheqer
GROWS FROM
חקר
ḥ-q-r
To search out, investigate, probe.
“search out” in this verse is cheqer. The root describes probing or searching something out. Here the object of that search is one’s own honor, turning recognition into something to scrutinize and pursue.
ALSO GROWS
chaqar: To search out, examine, probe.
חָקַר
The verb emphasizes active investigation, echoing the effort of seeking one’s own honor.
cheqer: Search, inquiry, investigation.
חֵקֶר
This noun makes personal honor the object under examination, rather than simply an honor received.
THE PATTERN
Desirable things lose their goodness when appetite turns into excess or self-exaltation.
Have you found honey? Eat what is enough for you, lest you be filled with it and vomit it up.Thus says the LORD, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor let the mighty man boast in his strength, let not the rich man boast in his riches.For everyone who lifts himself will be brought low; and the one who lowers himself will be lifted up.THE THREAD
Have you found honey? Eat what is enough for you, lest you be filled with it and vomit it up.Both verses use the same word for honey to show how something desirable can turn harmful in excess. This verse carries that measure from bodily appetite into self-regard: seeking one’s own honor cannot make it substantial.
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