What Does Proverbs 6:12 Mean?
A worthless man, a man of crookedness, walks with a crooked 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
A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth.THE KEY
The mouth’s crookedness is also the path the person walks: speech and direction share one shape.
THE MEANING
When a person’s speech twists what is true, the crookedness reaches beyond a sentence and becomes a way of walking through life. The verse joins mouth and movement: words reveal a direction that continues beyond one utterance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that speech is a detachable surface: the mouth can be crooked while the life remains straight.
THE ROOT
עִקְּשׁוּת
iqqeshut
GROWS FROM
עקש
ʿ-q-š
To be or make crooked; to twist.
The verse uses the noun “crookedness,” joining the mouth itself to distortion. The same root describes crooked paths, so speech and direction share one shape.
ALSO GROWS
iqqesh: Crooked, perverse.
עִקֵּשׁ
This adjective shows the same root describing a crooked quality, not just a single crooked utterance.
me’aqqesh: One who twists or perverts.
מְעַקֵּשׁ
This form makes the root active: crookedness can be something a person does to a path.
הוֹלֵךְ
holekh
GROWS FROM
הלך
h-l-k
To walk, go, or move along.
“walks” in this verse is holekh. Hebrew uses this root for literal walking and for a way of life. Here the crooked mouth belongs to the person’s ongoing course, not just to an isolated moment of speech.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: To walk or go.
הָלַךְ
The base verb keeps the image bodily and moving: this person is walking a crooked course.
halikhah: Walking, going, or a course of movement.
הֲלִיכָה
This related form makes visible how walking can name a continuing way or course.
THE PATTERN
Speech and conduct expose the same direction: the mouth’s shape and the path’s shape belong together.
Whose ways are crooked, and they turn aside in their tracks.He who walks whole, works alignment, and speaks truth in his heart.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.THE THREAD
Whose ways are crooked, and they turn aside in their tracks.The word translated “crooked” comes from the same Hebrew root as “froward” in this verse. Proverbs 2:15 lets you see the shared image: crooked speech and crooked paths express the same bent direction.
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