What Does Proverbs 7:27 Mean?
Her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death.
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
Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.THE KEY
The house is not shelter at the end of the road; it is the road descending into death.
THE MEANING
Her house is the route itself, carrying a person downward into death’s inner chambers. The verse speaks now wherever an inviting dwelling leads toward that same end.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what feels intimate and sheltering must be safe: here, the house itself is the way downward.
THE ROOT
דַּרְכֵי
darkei
GROWS FROM
דרך
To tread; a track made by walking.
“the way to Sheol” in this verse is darkei. The Hebrew phrase places the “ways of Sheol” as her house, and derekh belongs to darakh, “to tread.” A way is a track made by movement, so the house itself functions as the route, not simply a place along it.
ALSO GROWS
darakh: To tread, march.
דָּרַךְ
The root ties a way to the steps that make and follow a track.
derekh: Way, road, path.
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the path-word in the verse: the house is presented as a way leading somewhere.
יֹרְדוֹת
yoredot
GROWS FROM
ירד
To descend, go down.
“descending” in this verse is yoredot. The descent is built into the sentence’s movement: the ways keep going down into the chambers. The root makes the danger directional, with death at the bottom rather than merely associated with the house.
ALSO GROWS
yarad: To descend, go down.
יָרַד
This is the verb’s root form and names the movement carried by “going down.”
yored: One who descends; descending.
יוֹרֵד
This participle makes descent an ongoing movement, as in the verse’s paths that continue downward.
מָוֶת
mavet
GROWS FROM
מות
To die.
“the chambers of death” in this verse is mavet. The root names dying, the dead, and death itself. “Chambers of death” places the destination within that whole field: this is where the downward route ends.
ALSO GROWS
mut: To die.
מוּת
The verbal root names the action that “death” gathers into a destination.
met: Dead; a dead person.
מֵת
This form shows the root also names those who have reached death.
hemit: To cause to die; put to death.
הֵמִית
The causative form extends the same root from dying to bringing about death.
THE PATTERN
A path is revealed by the destination it carries a person toward.
For her house bows down toward death, and her tracks lead to the dead.Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold of Sheol.Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and roomy is the way that leads to perishing, and many are those who go in through it.THE THREAD
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold of Sheol.Proverbs 5:5 uses the same descent root, ירד (yarad, “descend”), and the same death root, מות (mut, “die”; here מָוֶת, mavet, “death”). Its image opens this verse further: the house is a path whose direction and destination are already joined.
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