What Does Romans 3:14 Mean?
Their mouth is full of cursing and of bitterness.
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
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:THE KEY
The mouth is a vessel for what fills it: curse and bitterness appear as its contents, not isolated slips.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses speech in the reader now: cursing and bitterness fill the mouth, carrying a call for harm and a sharp, bitter edge. These are not passing words; they are the contents the mouth gives voice to.
THE ROOT
ἀρᾶς
arás
GROWS FROM
ἀρά
ará
A curse or imprecation, a spoken invocation of harm.
“cursing” in this verse is arás. The word carries more than the sound of harsh speech: it names a curse, a call for harm. Its related verb and compound show that the verse describes speech with force and direction, not merely an unpleasant tone.
ALSO GROWS
aráomai: to curse, to call down harm
ἀράομαι
This verb shows the action held in the noun: cursing is speech that invokes harm.
katára: curse, imprecation
κατάρα
James uses this related compound for the curse that proceeds from the same mouth as blessing.
πικρίας
pik rías
GROWS FROM
πικρ-
pikr-
Bitter or sharp in taste; by extension, bitterness.
The word keeps a taste in the image: bitterness is sharp and unpleasant, not an abstract label. Its word family includes both the bitter quality and the act or state of becoming bitter, placing a cutting edge beside the mouth’s curse.
ALSO GROWS
pik rós: bitter, sharp-tasting
πικρός
The adjective preserves the concrete taste beneath the abstract English noun.
pikraínō: to make bitter or become bitter
πικραίνω
This verb shows bitterness as something that can be imparted or taken on, matching the verse’s image of a mouth carrying it.
THE PATTERN
Speech makes the inner store audible: the mouth gives voice to what fills it.
His mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression; under his tongue are toil and emptiness.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.Out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and curse. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.THE THREAD
Out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and curse. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.Romans uses ἀρά (ará, curse); James uses κατάρα (katára, curse), a related word built from the same Greek family. James places blessing and curse at one mouth, making visible the tension in a mouth filled with curse and bitterness here.
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