What Does Proverbs 6:25 Mean?
Do not crave her beauty in your heart; and do not let her take you with her eyelids.
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
Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.THE KEY
The same Hebrew seed names both coveting and what is desirable, so seduction begins when the heart turns beauty into a prize.
THE MEANING
Desire takes hold before a hand reaches: beauty is held in the heart, while the eyes make the pull feel like capture. The danger is already present in the gaze, where another person can become an object of wanting. The warning reaches the moment before outward possession.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that desire is harmless while it stays private and no one is touched; the verse locates the danger in what the heart covets and the gaze follows.
THE ROOT
תַּחְמֹד
taḥmōd
GROWS FROM
חמד
To desire or covet; to regard as desirable.
“crave” in this verse is taḥmōd. English separates lust from beauty’s desirability, but חמד (ḥ-m-d) carries both the act of coveting and the quality of what is wanted. The verse locates seduction in that valuation: beauty becomes a prize in the heart before taking occurs.
ALSO GROWS
neḥmād: Desirable, pleasing, precious.
נֶחְמָד
In Genesis 2:9, this word describes what is pleasant to the sight; the same root links the gaze with the heart’s desire.
maḥmād: A desirable or precious thing.
מַחְמָד
This form names the thing regarded as precious, revealing how coveting can turn a person or possession into something to claim.
THE PATTERN
Desire takes shape through the gaze and the heart before it becomes an act of taking.
You shall not desire your neighbor's house. You shall not desire your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.I cut a covenant with my eyes; why then should I gaze upon a maiden?For all that is in the world, the craving of the flesh, and the craving of the eyes, and the swagger of life, does not come out of the Father, but comes out of the world.THE THREAD
And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a craving for the eyes, and a tree to be desired for making one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.Genesis uses the same חמד root in נֶחְמָד (neḥmād), “to be desired”: seeing, desiring, and taking form one movement. Proverbs exposes that same threshold in the heart and eyelids, before the taking is complete.
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