What Does Proverbs 31:13 Mean?
She seeks wool and flax, and works with delight in her palms.
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
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.THE KEY
The Hebrew ties willing work to delight: what desire seeks, the hands bring into form.
THE MEANING
Here, seeking and making happen as one movement: she finds the raw materials and her hands give them form from delight. Desire is not left as a private feeling; it becomes visible in the work itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that useful work is only reluctant obligation: her hands work from delight.
THE ROOT
בְּחֵפֶץ
be-chephets
GROWS FROM
ח־פ־ץ
ḥ-p-ṣ
to desire, take pleasure in, or delight
“works with delight” in this verse is be-chephets. The Hebrew phrase is literally “with delight of her hands,” so willingly carries the sense of an inward desire, not just consent. Seeking and making become one motion: delight reaches outward through the hands.
ALSO GROWS
chafets: desiring; taking delight in
חָפֵץ
This verbal form shows the desire active within the person, the inward source of the work.
chafats-ti: I delighted; I desired
חָפַצְתִּי
This form appears in Psalm 40:8, where delight is joined to doing; the same root links inward pleasure with action.
דָּרְשָׁה
darshah
GROWS FROM
ד־ר־ש
d-r-sh
to seek, inquire, or pursue attentively
“seeketh” in this verse is darshah. Darash can mean more than a passing search; it carries the sense of inquiry and attentive pursuit. The work begins in noticing and seeking what is needed before the hands begin to make.
ALSO GROWS
derishah: inquiry; seeking
דְּרִישָׁה
This noun keeps the deliberate, attentive quality of the seeking that precedes her work.
midrash: inquiry; study or exposition
מִדְרָשׁ
Its shared root connects seeking material with the act of searching for understanding.
THE PATTERN
When inward intention enters the hands, desire takes visible form in work.
And all the women who were wise-hearted spun with their hands, and brought what they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen.Whatever you do, work at it from the living soul, as to the Lord and not to humans.THE THREAD
I delight to do what pleases you, O my God, and your instruction is within my inward parts.The same חפץ (ḥ-p-ṣ) root appears in “I delight”: here, delight is joined to doing God’s will. Proverbs shows that same inward delight moving through hands into crafted work, making pleasure and action part of one pattern.
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