What Does Proverbs 6:26 Mean?
For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a round loaf of bread, and a man's wife hunts a weighty living soul.
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
For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.THE KEY
The verse sets a loaf of bread against a precious living person, showing how desire can narrow what is priceless down to bare subsistence.
THE MEANING
A sexual entanglement can bring a man down to bare subsistence, while adultery is pictured as hunting a precious living person. The danger reaches beyond money or reputation to the life of the person caught in it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the cost ends with money or reputation; a human life is among the stakes.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
néfesh
GROWS FROM
נפש
N-P-Sh
The living self or person; the related verb carries the sense of recovering or refreshing oneself.
“living soul” in this verse is néfesh. Nefesh names the living person, not an abstract life detached from the one living it. Beside the loaf, it shows that the target of the hunt is a whole person whose life is precious.
ALSO GROWS
néfesh: Living soul, person, or life
נֶפֶשׁ
The thing being hunted is a living person, not merely a span of years.
nāphaš: To recover, refresh oneself, or rest
נָפַשׁ
The related verb points to a living self capable of recovery, making the threat reach beyond a material loss.
תָּצוּד
tāṣûd
GROWS FROM
צוד
Ts-W-D
To hunt, capture, or take as prey.
“hunts” in this verse is tāṣûd. The verb frames the pursuit as a hunt, not merely a risk or expense. Set beside néfesh, it pictures an entire living person as the target.
ALSO GROWS
ṣayid: Game, hunted food, or hunting
צַיִד
This branch carries the sense of pursuit for something to capture, sharpening the verse’s image of a life treated as prey.
ṣayyād: Hunter
צַיָּד
The hunter branch makes the verb’s predatory force visible: the precious life is pursued and caught.
THE PATTERN
Appetite can trade what is precious for immediate satisfaction, or consume the life pursuing it.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and a stew of lentils, and he ate and drank, and rose up, and went away; thus Esau made light of his firstborn right.Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold of Sheol.For what does it profit a human, if he gains the whole world and is damaged in his living soul? Or what will a human give in exchange for his living soul?THE THREAD
And they lie in wait for their own blood; they hide for their own living souls.“Their own lives” translates néfesh, the same word this verse calls precious. The warning turns the hunt inward: the trap laid for another person’s living self closes around the hunter’s own.
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