What Does Psalm 101:4 Mean?
A crooked heart shall turn aside from me; I will not perceive evil.
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 froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person.THE KEY
The Hebrew says “evil I will not know,” making the boundary a refusal of intimacy, not merely a refusal to notice.
THE MEANING
Crookedness turns away from the reader’s inner life, and evil is refused familiarity. The verse speaks of a present boundary: what is rejected as a way of being is not welcomed into intimate knowing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that familiarity with evil is neutral: here, knowing evil is the very relationship the speaker refuses.
THE ROOT
אֵדָע
ʾēdāʿ
GROWS FROM
י־ד־ע
To know, recognize, or perceive through acquaintance.
“perceive” in this verse is ʾēdāʿ. “I will not know” comes from yadaʿ, a verb that can mean more than possessing information: it can carry recognition and acquaintance. The line refuses intimate knowing of evil, not simply awareness that evil exists.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: To know, recognize, or experience.
יָדַע
This verb is the seed of the speaker’s “I will not know,” giving the refusal a personal, relational quality.
deʿah: Knowledge or understanding.
דֵּעָה
This noun from the same root shows how knowing can name an inward grasp, not just a fact one has heard.
maddaʿ: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
Another branch of the root; it sharpens the distinction between information and the close knowing refused here.
רָע
raʿ
GROWS FROM
ר־ע־ע
To be bad or cause harm; evil, harmfulness.
The Hebrew phrase says “evil I will not know”; it does not contain a separate word for “person.” The English wording points to a wicked person, while the Hebrew also lets the refusal reach evil itself, wherever it appears.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad or evil.
רַע
This adjective names the evil the speaker refuses to know as familiar.
raʿah: To do evil or cause harm.
רָעָה
The verbal branch shows evil as something enacted, not only a label attached to a person.
עִקֵּשׁ
iqqesh
GROWS FROM
ע־ק־ש
To twist or be crooked.
“crooked” in this verse is iqqesh. Froward carries the image of a bent orientation, not merely a disagreeable mood. The verse pictures this crookedness as departing from the speaker’s inner sphere.
ALSO GROWS
iqqesh: Crooked or perverse.
עִקֵּשׁ
This is the adjective in the verse, describing the heart’s bent direction.
ʿaqash: To twist or make crooked.
עָקַשׁ
The verbal form exposes the image beneath “froward”: a direction that has been twisted away from straightness.
THE PATTERN
Inner alignment is made visible by what a person refuses to take as their way.
Do not enter the path of the restless, and do not walk the way of the harmful ones.For the LORD perceives the way of the aligned, but the way of the wicked loses its way.Therefore, go out from their midst, and be marked off, says the LORD, and do not take hold of what is unclean. And I will take you in.THE THREAD
For the LORD perceives the way of the aligned, but the way of the wicked loses its way.Both verses use ידע (yadaʿ, “know”): here the speaker refuses knowing evil, while Psalm 1 says the LORD knows the righteous way. The shared root lets the contrast land as recognition and regard, not mere possession of information.
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