What Does Proverbs 31:3 Mean?
Do not give your strength to women, nor your ways to those who wipe kings away.
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
Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings.THE KEY
The chapter later calls a woman’s valor chayil too, so the danger is strength surrendered to what wipes a king away, not women themselves.
THE MEANING
Your strength here is your capacity and resources, and your ways are the path you follow; both can be handed over to attachments that erase those who rule. The same chapter uses chayil for a woman’s valor, so its warning targets destructive surrender, not women as a class.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that private desire has no effect on public authority or inner strength is undone: what you yield can also take the reins.
THE ROOT
חֵילֶךָ
ḥēylekha
GROWS FROM
חיל
ḥ-y-l
Force or capacity; the noun can refer to strength, resources, an army, or valor.
“strength” in this verse is ḥēylekha. This is not a narrow word for bodily vigor: chayil can name a person’s resources and force, and it also names a woman’s valor later in this chapter. The verse’s concern is where that capacity is yielded and what takes hold of it.
ALSO GROWS
chayil: Strength, might, resources, or valor
חַיִל
The word gathers physical power and broader capacity under one name.
eshet chayil: Woman of valor or strength
אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל
Proverbs 31:10 uses this same word for the woman it praises, complicating any reading that makes women themselves the threat.
לַמְחוֹת
lamḥōt
GROWS FROM
מחה
m-ḥ-h
To wipe away, erase, or blot out.
“wipe kings away” in this verse is lamḥōt. The verb pictures erasure, not merely injury: the king and his strength can be wiped from their place. The same root is used for wiping away tears, so the object determines whether the removal destroys or restores.
ALSO GROWS
māḥâ: To wipe away or blot out
מָחָה
In Psalm 51:1, the same verb describes blotting out transgressions; here it conveys the total removal of kings.
ūmāḥâ: And he will wipe away
וּמָחָה
Isaiah 25:8 uses this verb for wiping away tears, revealing the shared image of removal beneath both outcomes.
THE PATTERN
When desire gains mastery, the strength and direction of a person’s life can be surrendered with it.
And she made him sleep upon her knees, and called for a man, and had him shave off the seven braids of his head. And she began to bend him low, and his strength turned aside from him.It came to be, when Solomon was old, that his wives bent his heart after other gods, and his heart was not whole with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.All things stand open to me, but not all things bring together. All things stand open to me, but I will not be brought under the power of anyone.THE THREAD
Who can find a woman of strength? Her price is far above rubies.The Hebrew behind “virtuous woman” is eshet chayil, “woman of valor,” sharing chayil with “thy strength” here. That shared word lets the chapter hold both truths together: strength can be squandered in destructive bonds, and a woman can embody strength.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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