What Does Proverbs 5:6 Mean?
Lest you level the path of life, her tracks totter, and you cannot perceive them.
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 thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.THE KEY
What keeps moving cannot be weighed as a path toward life, so its destination stays unknowable.
THE MEANING
Her routes keep shifting beneath your attempt to weigh them against the path of life, until you cannot recognize where they lead. What will not hold a course conceals its destination even from careful thought.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that enough reflection can make a path knowable when the path itself keeps shifting.
THE ROOT
נָעוּ
nāʿû
GROWS FROM
נוע
n-w-ʿ
To move, waver, or wander.
“totter” in this verse is nāʿû. The Hebrew describes her tracks as moving or wandering, not merely as difficult to interpret. Their motion keeps them from holding a fixed line that can be known.
ALSO GROWS
nûaʿ: To move or waver.
נוּעַ
The base verb shows that the movement is built into the word translated “moveable.”
hēnîaʿ: To cause to move or shake.
הֵנִיעַ
This causative form shows the same root can describe something being set in motion, deepening the sense of a course that will not stay fixed.
תְּפַלֵּס
tephallēs
GROWS FROM
פלס
p-l-s
To weigh or level.
“level” in this verse is tephallēs. The verb carries the sense of weighing or leveling a course. The verse sets that act beside tracks that keep moving: their instability defeats the very measure that could make a path toward life discernible.
ALSO GROWS
peles: A balance or scales.
פֶּלֶס
This related noun makes the weighing sense concrete: a path can be assessed, but shifting tracks frustrate the measure.
pillēs: Weighed or made level.
פִּלֵּס
The same root describes making a way level, linking reflection to the work of establishing a steady course.
THE PATTERN
A way becomes discernible when it holds its course; paths that keep shifting conceal where they lead.
Level the track of your feet, and let all your ways stand firm.Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.A man of two living souls is unsteady in every way he takes.THE THREAD
Level the track of your feet, and let all your ways stand firm.The word translated “ponder” in both verses comes from פלס (p-l-s), meaning “to weigh or level.” Proverbs 4:26 joins that weighing to established ways; Proverbs 5:6 shows tracks that keep moving until they cannot be known.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us