What Does Proverbs 31:5 Mean?
Lest they drink and forget the statute, and twist the judgment of all who are bowed.
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
Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.THE KEY
When a ruler forgets the boundary that should govern judgment, people already bowed down bear the cost.
THE MEANING
When drink clouds judgment, the instruction that should govern a ruler slips from memory, and the ruling changes against people already afflicted. The verse shows how impaired judgment reaches beyond the one whose mind is clouded.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that intoxication or private appetite affects only the person who chooses it; those subject to that person’s judgment bear the consequences.
THE ROOT
מְחֻקָּק
mechuqqaq
GROWS FROM
חקק
ḥ-q-q
To carve, engrave, or inscribe; by extension, to prescribe.
“statute” in this verse is mechuqqaq. The word rendered “law” carries the sense of what is inscribed or prescribed, a marked boundary. The ruler’s failure is not simply forgetting an idea: the boundary that should shape judgment slips from view.
ALSO GROWS
choq: A statute or prescribed ordinance
חֹק
It carries the same sense of a defined instruction that is meant to govern a decision.
mechoqeq: An inscriber or lawgiver
מְחוֹקֵק
It names the person who sets down the boundary, linking the authority to prescribe with the duty to remember what is prescribed.
וִישַׁנֶּה
vishanneh
GROWS FROM
שנה
sh-n-h
To repeat or change; in this form, to alter.
“twist” in this verse is vishanneh. The verse describes judgment being changed, not merely misunderstood. The same root carries the sense of making something a second time or making it different, exposing how a ruling can be recast when its standard is forgotten.
ALSO GROWS
shanah: To repeat or change
שָׁנָה
Its range makes the altered judgment sound like a changed version of what should have been decided.
mishneh: A second or double; a copy
מִשְׁנֶה
It carries the idea of a second form, echoing the verse’s warning that judgment can be made into something other than its proper measure.
עֹנִי
oni
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿ-n-h
To press down, afflict, or humble.
“bowed” in this verse is oni. The people exposed to the changed ruling are named with a word from the seed of being pressed down. The injustice does not fall on a neutral case; it adds weight to people already carrying affliction.
ALSO GROWS
ani: Poor or afflicted
עָנִי
It names the person who is already bowed down and vulnerable to a further burden.
anah: To afflict or humble
עָנָה
It reveals the pressure contained in the word for “afflicted,” making the judgment’s human cost visible.
THE PATTERN
When those entrusted with judgment let appetite or advantage overrule its governing standard, the needy bear the altered ruling.
You shall not bend judgment. You shall not recognize faces, nor take a bribe, for the bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the aligned.Woe to those who carve out empty decrees, and who write out the toil they have written. To bend aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the bowed ones of my people, that widows be their spoil, and that they strip the fatherless!But you have dishonored the emptied ones. Do not the rich press down on you, and drag you before the platform of judgment?THE THREAD
The rod shall not turn aside from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to him shall be the assembly of the peoples.The word translated “lawgiver” comes from the same inscribing root as the prescribed instruction the ruler must remember here. The root links the authority that sets a boundary with the responsibility to keep judgment within it.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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