What Does Proverbs 27:20 Mean?
Sheol and the place of perishing are never filled, and the eyes of man are never filled.
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
Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one verb for Sheol, Abaddon, and the eyes: your gaze can hunger with the same bottomless appetite as the grave.
THE MEANING
Your eyes can carry a hunger that seeing does not satisfy. The verse places that hunger beside Sheol and Abaddon, giving all three the same condition: they do not reach fullness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that seeing enough will finally make desire feel full.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׂבַּעְנָה
tisbaʿnah
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
To be sated or filled; to have enough.
“filled” in this verse is tisbaʿnah. The Hebrew repeats this same verb for Sheol and Abaddon, then for the eyes of man. English gives the first pair “full” and the eyes “satisfied,” but the shared root places the grave and the gaze under one image: an appetite that never reaches enough.
ALSO GROWS
sāvēaʿ: Sated, full.
שָׂבֵעַ
This adjective makes the root’s sense of having enough explicit; the verse says these eyes never arrive there.
sōvaʿ: Satiety, fullness.
שֹׂבַע
This noun names the state the verse says the eyes do not attain.
אֲבַדּוֹן
ʾăḇaddōn
GROWS FROM
אבד
To perish or be lost.
“the place of perishing” in this verse is ʾăḇaddōn. Abaddon carries the root sense of perishing and loss within its name. Beside Sheol, it gives the verse’s unfillable appetite a stark edge: the eyes are compared with the realm of loss, and both remain unsated.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāḇaḏ: To perish, be lost.
אָבַד
This verb carries the root sense embedded in Abaddon, sharpening the image of destruction.
ʾăḇēḏāh: Loss, lost property.
אֲבֵדָה
This noun shows the same root reaching beyond destruction to what is lost.
THE PATTERN
What is driven to take in more can keep expanding without reaching fullness.
All words are worn out. A man cannot speak them. The eye is not filled with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.Indeed, because wine betrays, a proud man does not stay at home. He widens living soul like the grave, and he is like death, and he is never filled. He gathers all the nations to himself, and heaps all the peoples to himself.For all that is in the world, the craving of the flesh, and the craving of the eyes, and the swagger of life, does not come out of the Father, but comes out of the world.THE THREAD
All words are worn out. A man cannot speak them. The eye is not filled with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.The Hebrew uses the same root, שׂבע (sabaʿ, to be sated), for the eyes that are not satisfied. Proverbs places that unsated gaze beside Sheol and Abaddon; Ecclesiastes extends the image to seeing and hearing, showing that more perception does not itself produce fullness.
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