What Does Proverbs 2:15 Mean?
Whose ways are crooked, and they turn aside in their tracks.
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
Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:THE KEY
The person and the path bend together: one word names a twisted route, while the other carries the sense of turning aside.
THE MEANING
The verse shows direction in the tracks a person keeps making: the route is bent, and the walker is turned aside within it. Crookedness here is a course, not just a single misstep.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
One wrong turn leaves the larger course unchanged.
THE ROOT
עִקְּשִׁים
iqqeshim
GROWS FROM
ע־ק־ש
ʿ-q-sh
To twist or distort; to be crooked.
“crooked” in this verse is iqqeshim. This root names a bend in the way itself, not merely an isolated step off course. The verse describes the route as already carrying the shape of that distortion.
ALSO GROWS
iqqesh: Crooked, perverse.
עִקֵּשׁ
This is the singular form of the adjective used here; the path itself is characterized as bent.
iqqeshut: Crookedness, perversity.
עִקְּשׁוּת
In Proverbs 4:24, this word describes crookedness of the mouth, connecting the bent course here with distorted speech.
וּנְלוֹזִים
u-neluzim
GROWS FROM
ל־ו־ז
l-w-z
To turn aside or depart from the straight course.
“Froward” carries movement inside it: the word comes from a root meaning to turn aside. Set within the image of their tracks, it makes the wayward walker and the bent route part of one picture.
ALSO GROWS
naluz: Wayward, perverse.
נָלוֹז
This singular form names the quality of turning aside that the verse attributes to the walkers.
lezut: Perversity, crookedness.
לְזוּת
Proverbs 4:24 uses this noun for perversity of the lips, showing the same turning aside in speech.
THE PATTERN
A bent inner direction becomes a visible route that shapes the course a person travels.
Remove from you the crookedness of the mouth, and put far from you twisted lips.They do not know the way of wholeness, and there is no judgment in their steps. They have made their paths crooked; whoever walks in them does not know wholeness.And make straight tracks for your feet, so that what limps may not be turned aside, but rather be healed.THE THREAD
Remove from you the crookedness of the mouth, and put far from you twisted lips.Proverbs 4:24 uses both root families from this verse for crookedness and perversity in the mouth and lips. The same bend appears in what is spoken and in the tracks a person travels.
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