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Proverbs 6:17

arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

World English Bible · Public Domain

Parallel Translations

  • WEB World English Bible

    arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

  • KJV King James Version

    A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

  • JPS JPS Tanakh (1917)

    Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood;

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Cross-references (27)

Passages linked to Proverbs 6:17 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.

  • Psalms 120:2-3 Deliver my soul, Yahweh, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What will be given to you, and what will be done more to you, you deceitful tongue?
  • Proverbs 12:22 Lying lips are an abomination to Yahweh, but those who do the truth are his delight.
  • Psalms 101:5 I will silence whoever secretly slanders his neighbor. I won’t tolerate one who is arrogant and conceited.
  • Isaiah 1:15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
  • Psalms 5:6 You will destroy those who speak lies. Yahweh abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
  • Deuteronomy 27:25 ‘Cursed is he who takes a bribe to kill an innocent person.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
  • Proverbs 21:4 A high look and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, is sin.
  • Proverbs 26:28 A lying tongue hates those it hurts; and a flattering mouth works ruin.
  • Isaiah 3:9 The look of their faces testify against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They don’t hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought disaster upon themselves.
  • Hosea 4:1-2 Hear Yahweh’s word, you children of Israel; for Yahweh has a charge against the inhabitants of the land: “Indeed there is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of God in the land. There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed.
  • Deuteronomy 19:10 This is so that innocent blood will not be shed in the middle of your land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, leaving blood guilt on you.
  • 2 Kings 24:4 and also for the innocent blood that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and Yahweh would not pardon.
  • Psalms 18:27 For you will save the afflicted people, but the arrogant eyes you will bring down.
  • Psalms 31:18 Let the lying lips be mute, which speak against the righteous insolently, with pride and contempt.
  • Proverbs 14:5 A truthful witness will not lie, but a false witness pours out lies.
  • Isaiah 3:16 Moreover Yahweh said, “Because the daughters of Zion are arrogant, and walk with outstretched necks and flirting eyes, walking to trip as they go, jingling ornaments on their feet;
  • Isaiah 59:3-7 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness. No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity, and speak lies. They conceive mischief, and give birth to iniquity. They hatch adders’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web. He who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper. Their webs won’t become garments. They won’t cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and acts of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths.
  • John 8:44 You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.
  • Proverbs 1:11 If they say, “Come with us. Let’s lay in wait for blood. Let’s lurk secretly for the innocent without cause.
  • Proverbs 17:7 Arrogant speech isn’t fitting for a fool, much less do lying lips fit a prince.
  • Proverbs 30:13 There is a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes! Their eyelids are lifted up.
  • Isaiah 2:11 The lofty looks of man will be brought low, the arrogance of men will be bowed down, and Yahweh alone will be exalted in that day.
  • Psalms 10:4 The wicked, in the pride of his face, has no room in his thoughts for God.
  • Psalms 73:6-8 Therefore pride is like a chain around their neck. Violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes bulge with fat. Their minds pass the limits of conceit. They scoff and speak with malice. In arrogance, they threaten oppression.
  • Psalms 131:1 Yahweh, my heart isn’t arrogant, nor my eyes lofty; nor do I concern myself with great matters, or things too wonderful for me.
  • 1 Peter 5:5 Likewise, you younger ones, be subject to the elder. Yes, all of you clothe yourselves with humility, to subject yourselves to one another; for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
  • Revelation 22:15 Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)

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Explain this verse (8 sources)

Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.

John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Pro 6:17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and…

Pro 6:17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

Ver. 17. A proud look.] Heb., Haughty eyes. Men’s hearts usually and chiefly sit and show themselves in oculis, in loculis, in poculis, in their eyes, purses, and cups. The Latins speaking of an arrogant disdainful person say, that he doth supercilium attollere, look loftily. {a} Odi fastum istius Ecclesiae, said Basil; {b} I hate the proud stateliness of that Western Church: the Church of Rome he means, which even in those purer times began to look big, and despise all others in comparison of itself. {c} This he somewhere calls οφρυς δυτικη, the Western eyebrow, which occasioned at length that lamentable separation of the Eastern or Greek Church from communion with the Latin: the other four patriarchs dividing themselves from the Bishop of Rome, and at their parting, using these or the like words, - "Thy greatness we know, thy covetousness we cannot satisfy; thine intolerable insolence we can no longer endure, live to thyself," &c. {d} God himself "resists" a proud person in a special manner, {1Pe 5:5} and that "afar off"; {Psa 138:6} he cannot abide the sight of him, looks aloof at him. For whereas all other vices fly from God, saith Boethius, pride lets fly at him. {e} No wonder therefore though his soul abhor it, when it "buds especially," {Eze 7:10} and "testifies to a man’s face," {Hos 7:10} breaking forth as the masterpock of the soul in big swelling words, bubbles of vanity, {2Pe 2:18} proud gait, ridiculous gestures, garish attire, lofty and haughty looks, that hate of heaven and gate to hell. David could not endure it in any of his. {Psa 101:5} No more could Queen Elizabeth in the greatest favourite about her. Dissension once falling out between her and Essex about a fit man for government of Ireland, he forgetting himself, and neglecting his duty, uncivilly turneth his back, as it were in contempt, with a scornful look. She waxing impatient, gave him a cuff on the ear, bidding him begone with a vengeance, &c. {f} For avoiding of all discontent and distempers this way occasioned, it were to be wished that men would first get humble hearts, - the apostle makes humble mindedness the first virtue, {Eph 4:2} as here a proud look is made the first vice, the master root, - and then, that they would enter into a covenant, as Job did, with his own eyes at least; {Job 31:1} such a covenant as was once made at a meeting of the Borderers in the marches between England and Scotland: security was given and confirmed on both sides by oath, according to custom, and proclamation made, saith mine author, {g} that no man should harm other by word, deed, or look.

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A lying tongue.] Heb., A tongue of lying - viz., that hath learnt the trade, and can do it artificially. "A friar, a liar," was the old proverb here, passing for current of that evil generation, those loud and lewd liars. "The proud have forged lies against me"; {Psa 119:69} - Assunt mendacium mendacio, so the Hebrew hath it; they sew one lie to another, "until their iniquity be found to be hateful." {Psa 36:2} "A righteous man" - how much more the righteous God! - "hateth lying; but a wicked man" - for his lying - "is loathsome" (Heb., stinketh), "and cometh to shame." {Pro 13:5} Pilate, for instance, - of whom Egesippus saith that he was Vir nequam et parvi faciens mendacium, a naughty man, and that made light of a lie. It may seem so by that scornful question of his What is truth? {Joh 18:38} Tacitus also is by Tertullian said to be mendaciorum loquacissimus. Where he speaks of Christians, he writes so many lines, so many lies. Liars pervert the end for which God created speech, which was, to give light to the notions of the mind. Hence φωνη, quasi φως του νου.

And hands that shed innocent blood.] This is fitly subjoined and set after a lying tongue, because bloodshed is oft occasioned by lying.

“ Nil est audacius illis

Deprensis: iram atque animos ex crimine sumunt. ”

- Juvenal.

Ruffians revenge the lie given them with a stab. Persecutors, as in the French massacre, give out that Christians are the worst of men, not fit to live for their notorious enormities, and therefore not to be pitied if taken from the earth. Those that kill a dog, saith the French proverb, make the world believe he was mad first. So they always belied the Church, and traduced her to the world, and then persecuted her; first "took away her veil," and then "wounded her,." {Son 5:7} The devil was first a slanderer and liar, and then a murderer. He cannot murder without he slander first. But "God will destroy them that speak lies; the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man." {Psa 5:6}

{a} Profecto oculis animus inhabitat - Plin.

{b} Ep. ad Evagr.

{c} Quid verum sit neque sciunt, nequc sustinent discerere. - Ibid.

{d} Dr Field, Of the Church. Gerson. Carleton.

{e} Sola superbia se Deo opponit.

{f} Camden’s Elisab. 494.

{g} Ibid., 279.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain A proud look; pride of heart, which commonly discovers…
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations,.... Or, "thoughts of…
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain proud look--literally, "eyes of loftiness" (Psa 131:1). Eyes, tongue,…
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 17. A proud look] Rather, haughty eyes, A.V. margin,…
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (17) A proud look.—Hateful to God, because rendering men…
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The enumeration begins with pride. A proud look (Hebrew,…
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:

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