What Does Proverbs 1:16 Mean?
For their feet run toward evil, and hurry to pour out blood.
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 their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “shed” carries the image of pouring out, so violence appears as the emptying of another life.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes how violence announces itself: the feet move eagerly toward harm, and haste carries the intent toward bloodshed. Another person’s life is already being treated as something to spill before the act reaches its end.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that violence begins only when the wound is made; the verse locates it already in the eager movement toward blood.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁפֹּךְ
lishpokh
GROWS FROM
שפך
shaphakh
Pour out; spill.
“pour out” in this verse is lishpokh. The verb literally pictures pouring out, a concrete image carried into both bloodshed and the pouring out of the heart. Here, it makes violence an intentional emptying of life.
ALSO GROWS
shifkhu: “Pour out,” in “pour out your heart” (Psalm 62:8).
שִׁפְכוּ
The same root describes opening the inner life before God, showing that “pouring out” can name what is exposed from within as well as what is spilled in violence.
shofekh: “One who sheds” or pours out, in the warning about shedding human blood (Genesis 9:6).
שֹׁפֵךְ
This passage uses the same root for bloodshed, then grounds the seriousness of the act in humanity being made in God’s image.
רַגְלֵיהֶם
ragleyhem
GROWS FROM
רגל
ragal
Foot; by extension, to go about on foot.
The Hebrew word-family links the foot with going about: it also gives words for spies ranging through a land and for going about with the tongue. The feet here embody the route an intent is taking, making harm a course of movement rather than only its final wound.
ALSO GROWS
meraggelim: “Spies,” those who range through a land (Genesis 42:9).
מְרַגְּלִים
This branch links the foot to purposeful movement through a place, echoing the verse’s feet already taking a direction.
ragal al-leshono: “Go about with his tongue,” rendered “backbite” (Psalm 15:3).
רָגַל עַל־לְשׁוֹנוֹ
The same word-family can describe harm carried about in speech, widening the image from feet moving toward violence to harmful intent moving through a community.
THE PATTERN
Violence reveals its direction in eager movement toward harm, before the blood is shed.
A heart that plows crooked plans, feet that hurry to run toward evil.Their feet run toward harm, and they hurry to pour out clean blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of crookedness; ruin and breaking are in their paths.Their feet are quick to pour out blood.THE THREAD
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.Genesis 9:6 uses the same root שׁפך (shaphakh, “pour out”) twice: for the one who sheds blood and for blood being shed. It grounds the weight of that act in the human being’s creation in God’s image.
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