What Does Proverbs 3:9 Mean?
Give the LORD weight with your wealth, and with the first of all your yield.
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
Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:THE KEY
The first yield is where the verse makes the LORD’s weight visible in the whole increase.
THE MEANING
Here, honoring the LORD reaches into material life: the first part of what comes in carries the meaning of the whole increase. The verse presents provision as received under the LORD’s weight, not as something sealed off from its source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that devotion concerns only inward feeling while wealth remains outside the relationship with God.
THE ROOT
כַּבֵּד
kabbed
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty.
“give weight” in this verse is kabbed. The verb translated “honour” carries the sense of giving weight. The verse links the LORD’s weight to substance and first yield, bringing material increase into the same field as what is held most significant.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; glory.
כָּבוֹד
It shows that honour and glory share the language of weight, illuminating what it means to treat the LORD as weighty.
kaved: Heavy; weighty.
כָּבֵד
This root sense makes the verse’s call to honour concrete: the LORD is given weight in the way increase is regarded.
רֵאשִׁית
reshit
GROWS FROM
ראשׁ
Head; that which is first or foremost.
The word rendered “firstfruits” is reshit, related to rosh, “head.” The first portion is therefore more than an early slice of the harvest: it carries the idea of what stands at the head of the whole.
ALSO GROWS
rosh: Head; chief or foremost part.
רֹאשׁ
Its sense of “head” reveals the link between the first portion and what leads or represents the rest.
reshit: Beginning; first portion.
רֵאשִׁית
It names the beginning of the yield that the verse places alongside honouring the LORD.
תְּבוּאָה
tevu’ah
GROWS FROM
בוא
To come, enter, or arrive.
“yield” in this verse is tevu’ah. The word for increase or produce, tevu’ah, is related to the root meaning “come” or “enter.” The verse speaks of what comes in, then names its first portion as the place where the LORD’s weight is made visible.
ALSO GROWS
bo’: To come or enter.
בּוֹא
This verb gives the image behind increase as what arrives or comes in.
mavo: Entrance; entry.
מָבוֹא
It extends the root’s sense of coming in, echoing the verse’s focus on incoming provision.
THE PATTERN
The first portion bears the meaning of the whole, revealing what is treated as its source.
The first of the first-ripened of your ground you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in his mother's milk.And now, behold, I have brought the first-ripened fruit of the ground, which you, O LORD, have given me. And you set it down before the LORD your God, and bow down before the LORD your God.And if the first portion is set apart, so is the lump. And if the root is set apart, so are the branches.THE THREAD
Bring to the LORD the weight of his name; lift a gift, and enter his courts.The word translated “glory” is kavod, from the same כבד root behind “honour” here: weight. Psalm 96:8 joins that weight to an offering, making explicit the connection Proverbs 3:9 holds together.
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