What Does Proverbs 31:14 Mean?
She is like the merchant ships; from afar she brings her bread.
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 is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.THE KEY
Her bread is not limited by proximity: trade carries provision across distance, and her household is where it arrives.
THE MEANING
Her household is linked to a world beyond its walls. What is distant is not absent: movement and exchange carry bread into the present. What sustains you now can come from beyond what is nearby.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that distance means deprivation: what is far away can still become bread at hand.
THE ROOT
סוֹחֵר
socher
GROWS FROM
סחר
To go about, circulate, or trade.
“merchants” in this verse is socher. The word for merchant comes from a root associated with traffic and trade: goods move between places. The image connects her household to that circulation, so her provision reaches beyond what is nearby.
ALSO GROWS
sechorah: Merchandise, trade goods.
סְחֹרָה
Names what moves through exchange between places.
sachar: Trade, traffic, commerce.
סַחַר
Names the exchange that carries goods along the routes pictured in the verse.
מִמֶּרְחָק
mimmerchaq
GROWS FROM
רחק
To be far or distant; to put at a distance.
“afar” in this verse is mimmerchaq. The word names distance, yet here that distance is crossed by the route that brings bread home. Remoteness is not the same as absence; it can be the span provision travels.
ALSO GROWS
rachoq: Far, distant.
רָחוֹק
Carries the same sense of distance as the verse’s afar.
hirchiq: To make distant, remove far away.
הִרְחִיק
Shows that the root can describe distance as something established between places.
תָּבִיא
tavi
GROWS FROM
בוא
To come, enter, or arrive; in this form, to cause to come in.
“bringeth” in this verse is tavi. The verb presents her as bringing the food in: distant provision becomes present in her household. The word holds both movement and arrival in one action.
ALSO GROWS
bo: To come, enter, arrive.
בּוֹא
Names the arrival contained in the verb translated bringeth.
mavo: Entrance, entryway.
מָבוֹא
Shares the root’s sense of coming in, echoing the arrival of food at home.
THE PATTERN
Provision reaches need by moving through routes that span distance.
And all the earth came into Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, for the hunger gripped hard in all the earth.Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do their work in great waters.Then the disciples, each according to his ability, marked out to send help to the brethren who dwelt in Judaea.THE THREAD
As cold waters on a faint living soul, so is good report from a far land.Both verses use the Hebrew root רחק (raḥaq, to be far) for what comes from a distance. Here distance carries bread; there it carries good news that refreshes like cold water. In both, remoteness becomes the span across which something sustaining arrives.
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