What Does Proverbs 27:1 Mean?
Do not praise yourself over tomorrow, for you do not know what the day will bear.
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
Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.THE KEY
Hebrew casts the day as a bearer: its contents are a birth you have not yet encountered.
THE MEANING
You stand before a future whose contents are not yet known to you; the day brings what confidence cannot secure in advance. Boasting about tomorrow outruns what you can presently know.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that confident plans make the future yours or place its outcomes under your control.
THE ROOT
יֵלֶד
yēled
GROWS FROM
ילד
To beget, bear, or give birth.
“bear” in this verse is yēled. The verse pictures the day as giving birth to what is not yet visible. Tomorrow is an emergence, not an empty space whose contents you already possess.
ALSO GROWS
yālad: Give birth; beget.
יָלַד
The same root makes the day’s unknown future something coming into being.
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
A child is what has been brought forth, making the birth image concrete.
toledot: Generations; what comes forth.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch extends birth into the unfolding of what follows.
תִּתְהַלֵּל
tit·hallel
GROWS FROM
הלל
To praise or acclaim; in this reflexive form, to boast.
“praise yourself” in this verse is tit·hallel. The word for boasting shares its root with praise: boasting is praise turned toward oneself. The verse places that self-praise beside a future whose contents remain unknown.
ALSO GROWS
hālal: Praise or acclaim.
הָלַל
The shared root shows that boasting is a form of praise directed toward oneself.
tehillah: Praise.
תְּהִלָּה
This branch makes the root’s link between self-boasting and praise audible.
תֵּדַע
tēdaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know or recognize, often through encounter.
“know” in this verse is tēdaʿ. The verse names a limit in knowing: tomorrow has not yet been encountered. Its events have not come into view, so confidence cannot turn them into knowledge.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: Know; recognize.
יָדַע
The verb highlights that the future is not yet known through encounter.
daʿat: Knowledge.
דַּעַת
This related noun underscores the gap between what is known now and what the day will bring.
THE PATTERN
The coming day exceeds what human knowledge and planning can secure in advance.
For he does not know what will be, and as it will be, who will declare it to him?A person's heart plans his way, but the LORD sets his steps firm.You do not know what tomorrow holds. For what is your life? You are a mist, showing itself for a little while, and then made unseen.THE THREAD
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."Job uses the same ילד root for being born: his day is the setting of life’s arrival, while Proverbs pictures a day itself giving birth to what is unknown. The shared root makes each coming day an emergence rather than a possession.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us