What Does Proverbs 5:2 Mean?
That you may guard your planning, and that your lips may guard knowledge.
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
That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.THE KEY
The verse makes your lips custodians of knowledge, showing wisdom as both deliberate thought and guarded speech.
THE MEANING
Your discernment takes shape in the plans you hold, and your lips stand guard over what you know by encounter. Speech is not merely an outlet; it can preserve knowledge as it enters the world.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the belief that wisdom means voicing everything you know; it presents careful speech as one way knowledge is kept.
THE ROOT
מְזִמּוֹת
mezimmot
GROWS FROM
זמם
z-m-m
To devise, plan, or form an intention.
“your planning” in this verse is mezimmot. Discretion grows from the root for devising or planning, so what is guarded here is the mind’s power to form designs. The same root can name a purpose or a scheme; the verse places that power of planning under watch.
ALSO GROWS
mezimmah: A plan, purpose, or discreet design.
מְזִמָּה
It shows that discretion is active thought taking shape, not merely an abstract quality.
zimmah: A scheme or design, often harmful.
זִמָּה
The shared root shows that planning can form very different designs; discretion concerns how that power is held.
תִּנְצֹרְנָה
tintsorenah
GROWS FROM
נצר
n-ts-r
To guard, watch, or preserve.
“guard knowledge” in this verse is tintsorenah. The verb for what the lips do is natsar, to watch over and preserve. Beside the first line’s shamar, another word for guarding, it makes discernment and speech two stations of one custody: thought is kept, and knowledge is preserved at the point of utterance.
ALSO GROWS
natsar: To guard, watch, or preserve.
נָצַר
This is the root verb behind the lips’ act of keeping knowledge.
notser: One who guards or preserves.
נֹצֵר
This form casts the keeper as a continuing watchful presence, giving the lips an active role in preserving what is known.
דַּעַת
da'at
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or perceive through encounter.
Da’at grows from yada, knowing by encounter. The verse pictures this lived knowing as something the lips can preserve, so knowledge is more than information held inside: it is knowing that is carried carefully into speech.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know or perceive through encounter.
יָדַע
It reveals the experiential root beneath the verse’s word for knowledge.
madda: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
This related form keeps the sense of knowing connected to the verse’s da’at.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom protects what is known by governing the passage from inward discernment to outward speech.
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep guard over the door of my lips.Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to swell.THE THREAD
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.The Hebrew verb translated “keep” here comes from natsar, the same root used when the lips keep knowledge in Proverbs 5:2. The connection opens speech back to its source: the heart is guarded, and the lips preserve what comes from it.
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