What Does Proverbs 7:6 Mean?
For at the window of my house I gaze through my lattice.
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 at the window of my house I looked through my casement,THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “looked” carries a gaze cast outward and downward, turning the window into a vantage point from which a hidden scene begins to emerge.
THE MEANING
You stand at a threshold of sight: the lattice frames what passes below, and a movement comes into view before its meaning is clear. Seeing arrives first; the next lines reveal what the speaker sees.
THE ROOT
נִשְׁקָפְתִּי
nishqafeti
GROWS FROM
שקף
To look out or down over a scene.
“gaze through” in this verse is nishqafeti. The root carries a sense of looking out or down over what lies below. The same verb describes the LORD looking down from heaven, so this gaze holds a vantage point beyond the immediate room.
ALSO GROWS
hashqifah: Look down.
הַשְׁקִיפָה
Psalm 102:19 uses this form for the LORD looking down from the height of the sanctuary, echoing the elevated vantage in this verse.
vayyashqifu: They looked toward.
וַיַּשְׁקִפוּ
In Genesis 18:16, the men look toward Sodom; the same root makes looking a gaze that reaches across distance toward a scene.
THE PATTERN
A gaze that surveys a scene brings what is hidden or distant into view.
He leans down from the height of his set-apart place; from the heavens the LORD gazes upon the earth.The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the harm and the good.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.THE THREAD
He leans down from the height of his set-apart place; from the heavens the LORD gazes upon the earth.The Hebrew verb behind “looked” shares its root with the psalm’s “looked down.” One gaze reaches from a house toward the street; the other reaches from the sanctuary toward the earth, and both carry the sense of seeing from a vantage point.
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