What Does Proverbs 29:14 Mean?
A king who judges the emptied in truth has a throne that stands firm for the ages.
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 king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established for ever.THE KEY
The poor are the test built into the throne: how they are judged determines whether it stands.
THE MEANING
Authority is stable now when its judgment of the poor is truthful. The verse places the least powerful inside the foundation of a throne: their treatment bears directly on whether authority stands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that people with little power are peripheral to a ruler’s stability; their treatment is named as part of the throne’s foundation.
THE ROOT
בֶּאֱמֶת
be'emet
GROWS FROM
אמן
ʾ-m-n
To be firm, reliable, or supportive.
“in truth” in this verse is be'emet. Here, “faithfully” carries emet, truth, from a root of firmness and reliability. The king’s judgment becomes something people can lean on, and that same firmness appears in the throne being established.
ALSO GROWS
emunah: Firmness, steadiness, trust
אֱמוּנָה
It shows that truth has the quality of something dependable enough to bear weight.
Amen: Firm; steady assent
אָמֵן
The familiar response echoes the root’s sense of affirming what is firm.
דַּלִּים
dallim
GROWS FROM
דלל
d-l-l
To hang low, diminish, or become weak.
The word for the poor grows from a root of being low or made small. The judgment is tested precisely where a person’s status can make them easy to overlook.
ALSO GROWS
dal: Low, weak, poor
דַל
This singular form carries the same lowly status named in the verse.
dalal: To diminish or become low
דָּלַל
The verb gives the word for the poor its sense of being brought low.
יִכּוֹן
yikkon
GROWS FROM
כון
k-w-n
To be firm, fixed, or set in place.
“stands firm” in this verse is yikkon. Yikkon comes from kun, to be firm or set in place. Two distinct roots meet in this line: truth that can be relied on and a throne made firm.
ALSO GROWS
makon: A fixed place or dwelling
מָכוֹן
It shows how the root’s firmness can describe a place set in position.
hekin: To prepare or set in place
הֵכִין
This form makes the root’s sense of establishing something concrete.
THE PATTERN
Authority takes root when truthful justice reaches the people most easily diminished.
Faithful love and truth guard the king, and his throne is propped up by faithful love.But he will judge the bent low with alignment, and reprove with straightness the bowed ones of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the restless.And I see heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. The one who sits on it is called Steady and True, and in alignment he judges and wages war.THE THREAD
Faithful love and truth guard the king, and his throne is propped up by faithful love.It repeats אמת (emet, truth) beside the king and throne, making the connection more than thematic: the same word that names reliable judgment here names what preserves the king there. Together, the verses show the throne’s stability bound to truth and mercy.
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