What Does Proverbs 6:32 Mean?
Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks heart; he who does it ruins his own 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
But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.THE KEY
The verse locates betrayal’s cost inside the betrayer: the act damages the very life that acts from a heart left absent.
THE MEANING
The verse names adultery as an act whose damage turns inward: the betrayer’s own living self is harmed. Its phrase “lacketh understanding” is literally a lack of heart, locating the danger in an absent inner center, not merely in missing information.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that betrayal can remain a private act with no cost to the one who commits it.
THE ROOT
לֵב
lev
GROWS FROM
לבב
The inner heart or center of a person.
The Hebrew phrase behind “lacketh understanding” says “lacks heart.” Discernment is located in the inner center of the person, so the verse describes more than a failure to know facts: it names an inward absence.
ALSO GROWS
lev: Heart; the inner center of thought and will.
לֵב
It is the word used in the phrase translated “lacketh understanding,” revealing where the verse locates discernment.
levav: Heart; the inner self.
לֵבָב
This fuller form keeps the focus on the person’s inward center rather than on knowledge as information alone.
נַפְשׁוֹ
nafsho
GROWS FROM
נפש
The living self; a person as a living being.
“living soul” in this verse is nafsho. Nefesh names the living self, not a separate part of a person. The phrase “his own soul” makes the consequence land on the person’s own life, what the act ruins belongs to the one who commits it.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living soul; the living self.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the base word for the life the verse says is harmed.
nafash: To rest or refresh oneself.
נָפַשׁ
This verb from the same root echoes the living self’s capacity for restoration, sharpening the cost of what brings ruin.
nafsho: His living soul; his own self.
נַפְשׁוֹ
The possessive form in the verse makes the consequence personal: the damage reaches his own living self.
מַשְׁחִית
mashchit
GROWS FROM
שחת
To ruin, spoil, or destroy.
“ruins” in this verse is mashchit. The word translated “destroyeth” comes from a root that also names ruin and corruption. The verse describes the act as something that brings the person’s own life into ruin, not as a consequence that stays outside him.
ALSO GROWS
shachat: To ruin, destroy, or become corrupt.
שָׁחַת
This verb makes clear that the harm named in the verse is a process of ruin.
shachat: A pit; destruction or ruin.
שַׁחַת
This noun from the same root gives ruin the image of a place one can fall into.
ham-mashchit: The destroyer; the one who brings ruin.
הַמַּשְׁחִית
This related form names the agent of destruction, echoing how the verse places the destructive action in the person himself.
THE PATTERN
A chosen breach turns back upon the chooser and reaches the life that makes it.
But whoever misses me does violence to his own living soul; all who hate me love death.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.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
But whoever misses me does violence to his own living soul; all who hate me love death.Both verses use נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, living soul) for the life harmed by a person’s own course. Proverbs 6 names betrayal as an act that destroys it; Proverbs 8 describes the same inward cost as wronging one’s own living self.
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