What Does Proverbs 3:20 Mean?
By his knowledge the deeps are split open, and the clouds drip dew.
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
By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.THE KEY
What seem like two separate acts, depths breaking open below and clouds releasing dew above, flow from one knowing that holds creation together.
THE MEANING
You live within an order where what lies deep can open and the skies let dew fall. The knowing named here is more than stored information; it joins hidden depths and nourishing weather in one living order.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that knowledge is only information held in the mind: here, knowing is bound to what opens beneath and what nourishes from above.
THE ROOT
דַּעְתּוֹ
daʿtô
GROWS FROM
יָדַע
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
דַּעַת (daʿat), “knowledge,” grows from יָדַע (yadaʿ), “to know or perceive.” This is not detached information: the verse binds knowing to depths opening and the sky yielding dew.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: To know, recognize, or perceive.
יָדַע
The root verb keeps knowledge anchored in knowing rather than merely collecting facts.
madaʿ: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
This related noun carries the same seed into knowledge as a capacity to perceive.
נִבְקָעוּ
nibqāʿû
GROWS FROM
בָּקַע
To cleave, split open, or break through.
“split open” in this verse is nibqāʿû. The verb pictures the depths splitting open, not simply lying beneath the surface. The same root describes the breaking open of the deep in Genesis 7:11, so it names the force of opening without promising a gentle outcome.
ALSO GROWS
baqaʿ: To split, cleave, or burst open.
בָּקַע
This is the verb whose passive form describes the depths breaking open in the verse.
biqʿāh: A valley or plain.
בִּקְעָה
The word carries the image of an opening or cleft in the land.
THE PATTERN
Creation’s hidden waters and visible weather answer to a source beyond human making, carrying both sustenance and force.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that very day, all the springs of the great deep were split open, and the windows of heaven were opened.He covers the heavens with clouds, makes ready rain for the earth, and makes the grass sprout upon the mountains.So that you may become children of your Father in the heavens, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the aligned and on the crooked.THE THREAD
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that very day, all the springs of the great deep were split open, and the windows of heaven were opened.Both verses use בָּקַע (baqaʿ), “to cleave or break open,” for the deep. Proverbs joins that opening to dew, while Genesis joins it to the flood; the shared root names the opening itself, while the outcome changes.
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