What Does Proverbs 6:17 Mean?
Eyes lifted high, a tongue of lies, and hands that pour out clean 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
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,THE KEY
The verse exposes a shared direction in pride, lying, and violence: the self rises while truth and another person’s life are pushed down.
THE MEANING
These remain present forms of harm: a gaze that exalts itself, speech that carries falsehood, and hands that spill an innocent person’s blood. The verse places deception and violence in the same field of damage, where another person’s truth and life are violated.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a proud posture or a lie is harmless as long as no one is physically hurt; the verse names all three together.
THE ROOT
עֵינַיִם רָמוֹת
ʿênayim rāmôt
GROWS FROM
רום
rûm
To be high, rise, or be exalted.
“eyes lifted high” in this verse is ʿênayim rāmôt. The phrase is literally “high eyes”: the body enacts self-exaltation before any speech or action appears. The same root carries the sense of rising or lifting, giving pride a direction of elevation.
ALSO GROWS
rām: High; exalted.
רָם
The same root names the height the eyes take on in the verse.
hērîm: Raised; lifted up.
הֵרִים
This form shows the root’s active sense of lifting, echoing the proud gaze’s upward posture.
לְשׁוֹן שֶׁקֶר
lashon sheqer
GROWS FROM
שקר
sh-q-r
Falsehood; to act falsely or deceive.
“lying tongue” in this verse is lashon sheqer. The Hebrew says “a tongue of falsehood.” The same root names both falsehood itself and the act of dealing falsely, so the tongue carries falsehood as its substance.
ALSO GROWS
sheqer: Falsehood; a lie.
שֶׁקֶר
This noun names the falsehood carried by the tongue.
shāqar: To lie or deal falsely.
שָׁקַר
The verb from the same root links false speech to the act of deceiving.
שֹׁפְכוֹת
shōfekhōt
GROWS FROM
שפך
sh-p-kh
To pour out or spill.
The verb translated “shed” means “pour out”: bloodshed is pictured as life being emptied, not as a distant abstraction. The hands are named as the source of that pouring, and the blood is explicitly called innocent.
ALSO GROWS
shāphakh: To pour out; spill.
שָׁפַךְ
This is the root verb behind the hands’ action in the verse.
shefikhah: Pouring out; spilling.
שְׁפִיכָה
The related noun keeps the image of bloodshed as something poured out.
THE PATTERN
A harmful posture becomes visible in acts that exalt the self, distort truth, and injure another.
Whoever tongue-lashes his neighbor in hiding, him I will cut off; the one with lifted eyes and a broad heart, him I cannot bear.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.For out of the heart come evil reckonings, murders, adulteries, unlawful unions, thefts, false witness, harmful speech.THE THREAD
Lying lips make the LORD recoil, but those who work in trust are his delight.Proverbs 6:17 calls the tongue a tongue of sheqer, and this verse calls the lips sheqer, using the same root for falsehood. The repeated word shows that the harm belongs to falsehood itself, whether it comes through tongue or lips.
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