What Does Proverbs 27:26 Mean?
The lambs are for your wearing, and the goats are the price of the field.
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
The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field.THE KEY
The flock provides both what covers the body and what brings a field within reach.
THE MEANING
Here, a living flock meets more than one kind of need: lambs become clothing, while goats carry the value of a field. Provision reaches the body now and the ground that can sustain what comes next.
THE ROOT
מְחִיר
mekhir
GROWS FROM
מכר
makhar
To sell or exchange.
The Hebrew word for price belongs to the verb for selling, so value moves from one form into another. The goats become the exchange through which a field enters the household’s reach; the verse ties lasting ground to living provision.
ALSO GROWS
makhar: To sell.
מָכַר
This verb supplies the exchange sense carried by the word for price.
mimkar: A sale or thing sold.
מִמְכָּר
This related word shows the same root describing something transferred in exchange.
לְבוּשׁ
levush
GROWS FROM
לבש
labash
To wear or clothe.
The noun for clothing carries the action of wearing or putting on. The lambs provide a covering that becomes part of what the body wears; the same verb appears when skins clothe Adam and his wife in Genesis 3:21.
ALSO GROWS
labash: To wear or clothe.
לָבַשׁ
The verb names the action that the lambs’ provision makes possible.
malbush: Garment or clothing.
מַלְבּוּשׁ
This related noun shows clothing as a covering worn on the body.
THE PATTERN
A living source yields concrete provision for the body and the household.
And the LORD God made tunics of skin for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.And goats' milk is enough for your bread, for the food of your house, and for the living of your maidens.Who ever serves as a soldier on his own rations? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who shepherds a flock and does not eat of the flock's milk?THE THREAD
And the LORD God made tunics of skin for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.The Hebrew verb for “clothed” comes from לבש (labash), the same root behind the clothing in this verse. Both passages show covering as something a living source supplies to the body.
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