What Does Romans 3:13 Mean?
Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have worked deceit. The venom of asps lies under their lips.
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
Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:THE KEY
The verse pictures harmful speech as a grave turned outward: the mouth does not merely describe death; it releases it.
THE MEANING
The danger of speech is immediate: the throat can be an open grave, deception can ride the tongue, and venom can sit beneath the lips. Words can carry death outward while sounding ordinary.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that spoken deceit is harmless because it leaves no visible wound: the verse calls what sits beneath the lips poison.
THE ROOT
τάφος
táphos
GROWS FROM
θαπ-
thap-
Burial; the act of burying.
“tomb” in this verse is táphos. The grave word makes the throat a passage out of a burial place: death is pictured as already held within, then voiced. Calling it open makes the image outward-facing; what is hidden inside can emerge.
ALSO GROWS
tháptō: Bury.
θάπτω
The verb names the act that gives the grave its purpose: the throat is pictured through burial and what burial contains.
entaphiázō: Prepare for burial.
ἐνταφιάζω
This burial-family word keeps the image physical and concrete, rather than reducing the throat to a figure for careless talk.
δολιόω
dolioō
GROWS FROM
δολ-
dol-
Guile; deceptive craft.
“worked deceit” in this verse is dolioō. The verb belongs to a word family for guile, giving the tongue’s speech the quality of practiced deception. The image is not simply that words are mistaken; they are shaped to mislead.
ALSO GROWS
dólos: Guile, deceit.
δόλος
The related noun names the quality carried by the tongue’s words.
dólios: Guileful, deceitful.
δόλιος
The related adjective shows the same word-family describing a person or thing marked by deception.
THE PATTERN
Speech can become the outward channel through which death and harm reach others.
Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.But the tongue no one is able to tame; it is an evil that will not stand still, full of death-bearing venom.THE THREAD
But the tongue no one is able to tame; it is an evil that will not stand still, full of death-bearing venom.Both verses use the Greek noun ἰός (iós, poison or venom): here it lies beneath the lips, and James calls the tongue itself full of it. The shared word sharpens the image, the mouth is a grave-like opening and a place from which venom is delivered.
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