What Does Proverbs 6:15 Mean?
Therefore his calamity comes at once; suddenly he is shattered, and there is no mending.
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
Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy.THE KEY
The verse pairs a sudden break with “no healing,” revealing that some consequences reach a point beyond repair.
THE MEANING
When deceit and discord shape a person’s way, their consequences can arrive without warning. This verse names more than a setback: the break has no healing. It speaks now as a sober edge to the belief that every consequence can always be repaired.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that repair is always available later, no matter how long harm is repeated.
THE ROOT
מַרְפֵּא
marpe
GROWS FROM
רפא
rapha
to heal, make well
“mending” in this verse is marpe. The word translated “remedy” comes from the root for healing, and the verse says there is none. This is a break without restoration, not simply a difficult moment.
ALSO GROWS
rofe: healer, physician
רֹפֵא
The healer and the remedy share the language of healing, sharpening the force of the verse’s “no healing.”
refu’ah: healing, cure
רְפוּאָה
This names healing itself, the restoration the verse says is absent.
יִשָּׁבֵר
yishaver
GROWS FROM
שבר
shavar
to break, shatter, fracture
“shattered” in this verse is yishaver. The verb presents a break as an event that happens to a person, rather than a passing feeling. Paired with “no healing,” it describes a rupture with no restoration named.
ALSO GROWS
shever: fracture, ruin, breaking
שֶׁבֶר
The noun form makes the break itself visible as ruin or fracture.
shibber: he shattered, broke into pieces
שִׁבֵּר
This form intensifies the image of a break that is more than a minor setback.
THE PATTERN
Repeated choices can culminate in sudden consequences, and scripture warns that not every consequence has a remedy.
A man often reproved who stiffens his neck is broken suddenly, and there is no healing.Therefore this crookedness will be to you like a falling breach, bulging in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly, in a blink.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
A man often reproved who stiffens his neck is broken suddenly, and there is no healing.Proverbs 29:1 repeats the Hebrew sequence פֶּתַע יִשָּׁבֵר וְאֵין מַרְפֵּא (peta yishaver ve’ein marpe: suddenly be broken, and there is no healing). Its opening phrase about repeatedly hardening against correction makes this warning more specific: suddenness is the end of a pattern, not a random event.
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