What Does Proverbs 31:16 Mean?
She plans a field, and takes it; from the fruit of her palms she plants a vineyard.
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 considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.THE KEY
She devises a plan, takes the field, and turns the fruit of her own hands into a vineyard, wisdom here creates lasting growth.
THE MEANING
Wisdom moves through a whole cycle: you form a plan, acquire ground, and use the yield of your hands to establish a vineyard. Your work does not end with what it produces today; it becomes the beginning of something that can keep bearing fruit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Wisdom is only inward insight, separate from practical decisions about property, labor, and future growth.
THE ROOT
זָמְמָה
zāmemāh
GROWS FROM
זמם
z-m-m
To plan, devise, or plot.
“plans” in this verse is zāmemāh. The word translated “considereth” carries the sense of forming a plan or design. The field begins as something conceived, then becomes ground where her labor can grow into more.
ALSO GROWS
zāmam: To devise, plan, or plot.
זָמַם
This verb shows that her consideration is an active intention that precedes the purchase.
mezimmāh: A plan, purpose, or scheme.
מְזִמָּה
This noun preserves the root’s sense of a thought taking shape as a design.
נָטְעָה
nāṭʿāh
GROWS FROM
נטע
n-ṭ-ʿ
To plant or set something into the ground.
“plants” in this verse is nāṭʿāh. The same planting root describes the vineyard she establishes and the act of putting something into the ground so it can grow. Her hands do more than produce a yield: they set that yield into the ground as the start of future fruit.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭaʿ: To plant or set in the ground.
נָטַע
This is the verb’s basic action: establishing something where it can take root and grow.
maṭṭāʿ: A planting or plantation.
מַטָּע
This noun names what results from planting: ground made productive through what has been set into it.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom puts what is in hand to work so it can yield beyond the present moment.
In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not set your hand down, for you do not perceive whether this or that thrives, or whether both, as one, are good.Then the one who had received five talents went and put them to work, and made five more talents.Every wise woman builds her house, but folly tears it down with her hands.THE THREAD
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he set Adam, whom he had shaped.The same Hebrew root, נטע (nāṭaʿ, “to plant or set in the ground”), describes the garden and the vineyard. Both begin as deliberate planting: something is set into the ground so it can grow and bear fruit.
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