What Does Proverbs 29:3 Mean?
A man who loves wisdom makes his father rejoice, but the one who grazes with harlots sees his wealth perishing.
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
Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance.THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “keepeth company” can also mean to shepherd or feed, so the verse pictures attachment as something tended whose fruit reaches a family and its wealth.
THE MEANING
Love of wisdom reaches beyond the self: it brings your father joy. The person who keeps company with prostitutes sees wealth disappear. The verse holds family joy and material loss side by side, showing how attachments shape what reaches the household.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that private attachments affect only the person who holds them: the verse shows their effects reaching both a father’s joy and material resources.
THE ROOT
רֹעֶה
roʿeh
GROWS FROM
רעה
r-ʿ-h
To pasture, tend, or feed; also to associate with.
“grazes with” in this verse is roʿeh. The English phrase sounds like passive proximity, while this Hebrew verb can also carry the sense of shepherding or feeding. The verse presents association as an ongoing bond, then shows what that bond costs in wealth.
ALSO GROWS
rōʿeh: One who tends or pastures a flock.
רֹעֶה
The shepherd sense gives the phrase an image of sustained involvement, not a passing encounter.
mirʿeh: A grazing place or pasture.
מִרְעֶה
This branch keeps the root’s feeding and tending imagery in view as the verse describes company kept over time.
חָכְמָה
ḥokhmāh
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
To be wise or skilled.
This word carries the sense of practiced wisdom, not merely an idea held in the mind. Its fruit is relational: love of wisdom becomes joy for a father.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākām: A wise or skilled person.
חָכָם
The related word “wise” appears in Proverbs 13:20, where walking with the wise shapes the person who walks with them.
ḥākam: To become or act wisely.
חָכַם
The verbal branch presents wisdom as something expressed in a way of living, fitting the verse’s focus on love and its effects.
יְאַבֵּד
yeʾabbed
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
To perish or be lost; in the form used here, to lose or destroy.
“sees his wealth perishing” in this verse is yeʾabbed. The verb behind “spendeth” belongs to the language of loss and perishing. It makes the consequence more severe than mere outlay: the wealth itself disappears.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: To perish or go missing.
אָבַד
This basic form makes loss, rather than ordinary spending, the root image behind the verse’s consequence.
ʾăbēdāh: Loss or something lost.
אֲבֵדָה
This related noun shows how the same root names the condition of what has disappeared.
THE PATTERN
The company a person keeps shapes what grows in their life and what is lost.
The one who walks with the wise becomes wise; the one who grazes beside the dull is broken.Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.Do not wander; bad company rots good habits.THE THREAD
The one who walks with the wise becomes wise; the one who grazes beside the dull is broken.“Wisdom” here and “wise” in Proverbs 13:20 come from the same Hebrew root, חכם (ḥ-k-m). This verse opens the contrast further: the company around a person is part of how wisdom takes shape, and part of what is at stake.
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