What Does Proverbs 16:27 Mean?
A worthless man digs up harm, and upon his lips is a scorching fire.
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
An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire.THE KEY
The verse turns speech into excavation: evil is dug up, then emerges at the lips as fire.
THE MEANING
A person can excavate harm below the surface and carry it into the open through speech. The lips become the boundary where what was buried emerges, and the words arrive with fire’s force.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that words are harmless because they are only talk: it presents speech as the opening of something cultivated beneath the surface and as a force that can scorch.
THE ROOT
כֹּרֶה
koreh
GROWS FROM
כרה
to dig, excavate
“digs up” in this verse is koreh. The verb pictures someone actively digging evil out, as if working below the surface. The same root describes digging a pit and digging a well, so excavation can create a trap or a source; here the buried work reaches the lips as fire.
ALSO GROWS
karah bor: dug a pit
כָּרָה בּוֹר
Psalm 7:15 uses this root for a pit dug into the ground, making the verse’s excavation concrete.
karu be’er: dug a well
כָּרוּ בְּאֵר
Genesis 26:25 uses the same root for digging a well, showing that what is excavated can also become a source.
שְׂפָתָיו
sefatav
GROWS FROM
שפה
lip, edge, boundary
The Hebrew word שָׂפָה can mean lip, language, or an edge such as a shore. The lips are the boundary where what is inward crosses into speech, and the next image makes that crossing scorch.
ALSO GROWS
safah: lip
שָׂפָה
The physical lip is the edge through which the buried matter in the verse comes into view.
safah: language
שָׂפָה
The same word names language, linking the lips directly with the speech that carries the fire.
sefat hayam: shore or edge of the sea
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
The shore sense reinforces the image of a boundary where one domain meets another.
THE PATTERN
What is cultivated inwardly can emerge through speech as a force that harms.
Your tongue plans ruin, like a sharp razor, goading deceit.Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.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
He digs a pit and hollows it out, and falls into the pit he works.The same Hebrew root, כרה (karah), appears in both verses for digging. Psalm 7:15 makes the excavation tangible: the digger can fall into the pit he has made.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us