What Does Proverbs 3:10 Mean?
Your barns are filled full, and your vats burst with new wine.
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
So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.THE KEY
In Hebrew, the wine does not merely fill the vats: it breaks through their boundaries, turning fullness into outward spread.
THE MEANING
Provision here is not bare survival: it fills the storehouse and spills from the winepress. The image holds security and gladness together, with abundance exceeding its containers.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that provision is safe only when tightly contained dissolves here: fullness can cross its own boundary.
THE ROOT
יִפְרֹצוּ
yifrotzu
GROWS FROM
פרץ
To break through, burst out, or spread beyond a boundary.
“burst” in this verse is yifrotzu. The verb pictures more than a full vat: its contents break past the vessel’s limit. The same root can describe spreading outward, so the image moves from fullness into expansion.
ALSO GROWS
ufaratzta: Spread abroad.
וּפָרַצְתָּ
In Genesis 28:14, this form describes spreading in every direction, linking the wine’s overflow with outward expansion.
perets: A breach or break in a boundary.
פֶּרֶץ
This related noun makes the boundary-breaking force of the overflowing vats more vivid.
שָׂבָע
savaʿ
GROWS FROM
שבע
To be sated, full, or satisfied.
“filled full” in this verse is savaʿ. “Plenty” carries the sense of fullness that satisfies, not simply a large count. Beside the verb for bursting, that fullness does not stop at the storehouse: it spills beyond it.
ALSO GROWS
saveaʿ: Full or satisfied.
שָׂבֵעַ
This adjective shows the satisfaction contained in the barns’ fullness.
sovaʿ: Satiety or fullness.
שֹׂבַע
This noun names the state of having enough, grounding “plenty” in fullness rather than mere accumulation.
THE PATTERN
When provision reaches fullness, it can exceed its container and flow outward.
And the threshing floors are filled with wheat, and the vats pour out new wine and oil.Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and spilling over, they will give into your lap. For with the same measure you measure out, it will be measured back to you.THE THREAD
And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall burst forth to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the ground shall be blessed.The verb translated “burst out” in Proverbs 3:10 shares its root with “spread abroad” here. That shared word opens the overflowing wine into an image of abundance extending beyond its original bounds.
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