What Does Micah 6:12 Mean?
For her rich are filled with violence, and those who settle in her have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
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 the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.THE KEY
Here, violence fills the powerful while deceit fills the mouths of the people, making speech part of the same corrupt order.
THE MEANING
The verse shows you how corruption works in a community now: wealth can be filled with violence, while falsehood becomes ordinary speech. Deceit is already in the mouth before the tongue gives it voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that speech can be separated from violence. Here, deceitful speech belongs to the same corrupt order that fills the powerful with violence.
THE ROOT
רְמִיָּה
remiyyah
GROWS FROM
רמה
To deceive or deal treacherously.
“deceitful” in this verse is remiyyah. The Hebrew uses a noun for deceit after “tongue,” so the phrase can be heard as “their tongue is deceit in their mouth.” It names more than an occasional quality of speech: deceit is what the tongue carries.
ALSO GROWS
rāmāh: Deceive or deal treacherously.
רָמָה
This verbal form shows deceit as an act carried out, not just an idea.
remiyyah: Deceit or treachery.
רְמִיָּה
This noun lets the verse identify the tongue with the deceit carried within the mouth.
חָמָס
ḥāmās
GROWS FROM
חמס
Violent wrong or oppression.
“violence” in this verse is ḥāmās. The rich are described as filled with חָמָס (ḥāmās, violent wrong), not merely as committing isolated acts of force. The image links their fullness to the harm surrounding their wealth.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmās: Violence, wrong, or oppression.
חָמָס
This is the word that fills the rich men in the verse, making violence a defining condition of their power.
ḥāmas: To act violently or do wrong.
חָמַס
The verbal form shows the same root as action: the violence that fills them is also something they do.
שָׁקֶר
sheqer
GROWS FROM
שקר
Falsehood; to lie or deal falsely.
“lies” in this verse is sheqer. The inhabitants speak שֶׁקֶר (sheqer, falsehood), naming what their speech produces. Then the verse calls the tongue itself רְמִיָּה (remiyyah, deceit), moving from spoken falsehood to a deceit-bearing tongue.
ALSO GROWS
sheqer: A lie or falsehood.
שֶׁקֶר
This noun is what the inhabitants speak, making falsehood part of their shared public language.
shāqar: To lie or deal falsely.
שָׁקַר
The verb shows falsehood as conduct, extending the root from the lie itself to the act of lying.
THE PATTERN
When corruption becomes a community’s way of life, violence and falsehood surface together in its public speech.
For your hands are soiled with blood, and your fingers with crookedness; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue murmurs crookedness.Ruin is in its midst, and deceit and guile do not move away from its wide ways.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
For your hands are soiled with blood, and your fingers with crookedness; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue murmurs crookedness.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root שקר (sheqer, falsehood) for the lips’ lies. It places bloodied hands and lying lips in one sentence, revealing how violence and false speech belong to the same public life.
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