What Does Proverbs 6:29 Mean?
So is the one who goes in to his companion's wife; no one who touches her comes away clear.
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
So he that goeth in to his neighbour’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.THE KEY
The Hebrew root for “touch” also carries the sense of striking or afflicting, giving this contact a weight English can hide.
THE MEANING
This verse names entering a neighbor’s marriage as an act that cannot be cleared of guilt. Its wording refuses to make the boundary crossing harmless by reducing it to a touch.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that adultery can be a harmless private act with no guilt attached.
THE ROOT
נֹגֵעַ
noge'a
GROWS FROM
נגע
n-g-ʿ
To touch or reach; in other forms, to strike or afflict.
“toucheth” in this verse is noge'a. This root’s range joins contact with impact, so “touch” need not sound weightless here. That range does not mean every use of the word implies harm, but it makes the verse’s warning about this contact more vivid.
ALSO GROWS
naga: To touch, reach, or strike.
נָגַע
The verb carries both the idea of contact and, in some uses, impact.
nega: A stroke, affliction, or plague.
נֶגַע
This noun shows how the same root can describe an impact that leaves a mark.
יִנָּקֶה
yinnaqeh
GROWS FROM
נקה
n-q-h
To be clean, clear, or free from guilt.
“clear” in this verse is yinnaqeh. The verse speaks of being cleared, not merely feeling innocent. Its wording presents guilt as something that cannot be made to disappear by describing the act as only a touch.
ALSO GROWS
naqi: Clean or innocent.
נָקִי
This related form makes the link between innocence and cleanness visible.
niqqayon: Cleanness or innocence.
נִקָּיוֹן
This noun shows the root’s use for a state of being clear or clean.
THE PATTERN
Crossing a boundary carries consequences that cannot be erased by minimizing the act.
Can a man scoop fire into his fold, and his garments not be burned?Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.Flee the selling of bodies. Every shortcoming that a person does is outside the body; but the one who sells bodies misses the mark against his own body.THE THREAD
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who by no means leaves the guilty clean, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.Exodus uses the same root, נקה (n-q-h), when it says God will not “clear the guilty.” The shared word makes Proverbs’ “not be innocent” a matter of being cleared or left uncleared, holding forgiveness alongside the truth that guilt is not erased by pretending the act did not matter.
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