What Does Proverbs 4:27 Mean?
Do not bend to the right or to the left; remove your foot from harm.
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
Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.THE KEY
The path changes where the foot is set: direction is embodied movement, not an abstract intention.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you where your direction begins to bend: each step becomes part of a path. Evil is something your foot can stand in and leave, so harm is given a tangible route rather than left as an abstraction. The course changes one placement at a time.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a small turn toward harm leaves your course untouched; the verse places the change of direction in the next step.
THE ROOT
רַגְלְךָ
raglekha
GROWS FROM
רגל
Foot; r-g-l (regel), with a verbal branch meaning to go about on foot.
English can make “foot” sound like incidental anatomy, but רגל also grows into the verb “go about” and the scout who moves through a place to inspect it. The verse’s removal of the foot pictures a route changing through embodied movement: evil is terrain the step can leave.
ALSO GROWS
regalim: Feet; the plural of foot.
רְגָלִים
The plural keeps the image concrete: the path is taken through the movement of feet.
meraggel: A scout or spy, one who moves about to inspect a place.
מְרַגֵּל
This branch shares the foot-root’s consonants and makes movement through terrain active; the foot approaches, traverses, and examines its surroundings.
THE PATTERN
A person’s course is shaped and corrected through the steps they take.
Level the track of your feet, and let all your ways stand firm.I hold back my feet from every evil way, so that I may guard your word.And make straight tracks for your feet, so that what limps may not be turned aside, but rather be healed.THE THREAD
I hold back my feet from every evil way, so that I may guard your word.Psalm 119:101 uses the same root רגל (r-g-l, regel, “foot”) in “my feet,” then sets those feet against רָע (rāʿ, “evil”). The shared bodily image makes the way concrete: the foot either enters it or is held from it.
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