Proverbs 6:16-19: The Seven Things God Hates
Short answer: Proverbs 6:16-19 says, "There are six things which Yahweh hates; yes, seven which are an abomination to him:" and then names them: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness who utters lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. The number pattern is a Hebrew way of saying the list is complete and deliberate, not that God stopped counting at seven. These are not seven isolated slip-ups. Read together they describe a person whose pride, speech, hands, heart, feet, and influence all work in one direction: toward the destruction of neighbors and the fracture of a community. The passage is a warning, and it is also a mirror held up to anyone who reads it honestly.
Why the list is seven and not six
The opening line uses a well-known Hebrew poetic device. Proverbs 6:16 begins, "There are six things which Yahweh hates; yes, seven which are an abomination to him:" The movement from six to seven is not a correction, as though the writer miscounted and then remembered an extra item. It is a rhetorical staircase. The speaker raises a number, then raises it again to signal that what follows is a complete and settled catalogue. The same pattern appears elsewhere in Proverbs, and it trains the reader to lean in. Something serious is about to be named.
The word translated hates is strong, and so is the second word. The text says these things are an abomination to him. That is covenant language, not the language of mild preference. It describes what is detestable in the sight of a holy God. Proverbs is a book of wisdom, and wisdom here is not mere practical advice about getting along. It is grounded in the character of Yahweh himself. What he hates is not arbitrary. It is the opposite of what he is.
Notice also that the list is not introduced as a list of sins in general. It is a list of things Yahweh hates, which means the passage is telling us something about God before it tells us something about us. The doctrine comes first. If we rush to the moral application without pausing on the subject, we turn the proverb into a self-help checklist and miss its weight. The one who hates is the covenant God who spoke at Sinai and who calls a people to reflect his own character in ordinary life.
Numbers in Hebrew wisdom are often used this way, to frame and to focus. So the seven items are meant to be held together as one portrait. We should not treat them as a random sampler of vices, nor should we assume that only these seven things displease God. The point is that these seven, taken together, describe a recognizable kind of person. The rest of the study will walk through that portrait one line at a time and ask what it says to us.
Haughty eyes and a lying tongue
The list begins where sin usually begins, in the eyes. Proverbs 6:17 names "haughty eyes" first. The phrase describes the lifted gaze, the posture of someone who looks down on others because they think they are above them. Pride is not merely a bad attitude; in Scripture it is the root from which much else grows. Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of Yahweh is to hate evil. I hate pride, arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse mouth." God himself speaks there, and pride heads his list too.
Haughty eyes are dangerous precisely because they are invisible. A person can conceal anger, and sometimes even conceal greed, but pride shapes the way we see every other person in the room. It decides whose opinion counts, who deserves our time, who is beneath our notice. It is the quiet assumption that we are the standard. The proverb places it first because everything else on the list is easier to do once you believe you are above your neighbor.
The second item is "a lying tongue." In the Hebrew arrangement, eyes and tongue are paired: what the eyes desire, the tongue serves. A lying tongue is not only the deliberate fabrication under oath. It is also the flattering word, the exaggerated story, the omission that leaves a false impression, the promise made with no intention of keeping it. Scripture treats truthful speech as a mark of God's people, which is why Zechariah 8:16-17 says, "These are the things that you shall do: speak every man the truth with his neighbor. Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates."
Put the two lines together and a pattern emerges. Pride looks down; the tongue then bends reality to protect the proud self. This is why dishonest speech is so often tied to reputation management. We lie to preserve the image we have built. The proverb does not let us file lying under minor faults. It stands second in a list of things God calls an abomination, and it is joined at the hip to the pride that produced it.
Hands that shed innocent blood, hearts that devise
The third item is "hands that shed innocent blood." Some readers pause here, because most of us have never taken a life. But the proverb is describing a trajectory, not only a single act. Hands are the instrument of action. Bloodshed is the end of a road that begins with contempt. Jesus makes this connection explicit when he traces murder back to anger and insult. The point is not to make every sharp word equivalent to killing, but to refuse the comfortable distance we like to keep between ourselves and the violent.
Hands also remind us that sin is embodied. The list is not a set of abstract vices but a set of body parts: eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet. The writer is saying that the whole person is involved. There is no such thing as a private sin that leaves the body and the community untouched. The proud look becomes a cutting word, and the cutting word can become a hand raised against a neighbor. The proverb compresses that whole arc into a phrase.
The fourth item turns inward: "a heart that devises wicked schemes." Here the focus is on planning. This is not a moment of weakness or a sudden temptation that surprised the person. It is premeditation. The heart in Hebrew thought is the seat of thought and intention, not merely emotion. So this line describes someone who lies awake working out how to get what they want at another's expense. It is the difference between failing under pressure and building a strategy.
Read the third and fourth lines together and the portrait sharpens. The schemer and the violent man are neighbors in this list because violence is usually the last step of a plan. Long before hands act, the heart has already decided that the neighbor is an obstacle rather than a person. This is why Scripture is so concerned with the inner life. The command against murder is not satisfied by a clean criminal record; it reaches back to the plotting heart that God sees.
Feet swift to mischief and a false witness
The fifth item is "feet that are swift in running to mischief." The picture is eagerness. These feet do not drift into trouble; they run toward it. The word mischief covers harm done to others, and the emphasis falls on the speed. There is a kind of person who is quick to join the trouble, quick to show up where damage is being done, quick to add their weight to a bad cause. They do not need to be dragged. They are already moving.
Proverbs is full of warnings about bad company, and this line explains why. The feet are attached to a person who has decided that the path of harm is the path of interest. The contrast in Scripture is the one whose feet are directed toward peace and whose steps are ordered by the Lord. The proverb asks a practical question: where do your feet run? What do you hurry toward? The answer reveals more about your heart than your stated beliefs do.
The sixth item is "a false witness who utters lies." This is the legal form of the lying tongue mentioned earlier, and its placement matters. In Israel's courts, a false witness could cost an innocent person their property, their family, or their life. The ninth commandment addresses exactly this. So the proverb is not repeating itself; it is showing how the lying tongue becomes a public weapon. Private dishonesty does not stay private. It eventually walks into a courtroom or a meeting or a conversation where someone's name is on the line.
Together, feet and witness describe a person who is actively harmful to the community. This is important for reading the list as a whole. Four of the seven items have to do with speech and influence, not with what we would call major crimes. The Bible is not squeamish about falsehood. It ranks the destructive word alongside the violent hand, because both destroy a neighbor. If we grade sins by how respectable they appear, we will find ourselves disagreeing with God about what he hates.
The seventh thing and why it is last
The seventh item is "one who sows discord among brothers." It comes last, and the placement looks deliberate. The earlier six build toward it. The proud eyes, the lying tongue, the scheming heart, and the false witness all produce the same harvest: a community torn apart. Discord is the fruit of the other six, and it is named as its own abomination. God hates the fracture of his people. He is a God who gathers. The sower of discord scatters, and does it on purpose.
The verb is agricultural. To sow is to plant with intent, expecting a crop. The sower of discord plants a word here, an insinuation there, and waits. They do not usually announce what they are doing. They work through confidences and half-truths and careful questions. Within a family, a church, or a friendship, the harvest comes in the form of suspicion, factions, and estrangement. The proverb treats this as one of the seven things God hates most, which should make us examine how casually we handle information about other people.
It is worth noting that discord among brothers is not the same as honest disagreement. Faithful Christians differ about many things, and sometimes a conflict is the price of truth-telling. The proverb is not a gag order, and it should never be used to silence someone who reports wrongdoing. What God hates is the deliberate cultivation of division, the sowing of suspicion for its own sake or for personal advantage. The distinction is between speaking truth in love and planting weeds on purpose.
Because this item is last, it functions as the summary of the whole list. If you want to know which way the other six tendencies are heading, watch the community around such a person. Pride, lying, scheming, and false testimony all converge on the same end. The wisdom of Proverbs is that it shows us the destination before we arrive. The warning is not there to condemn the reader but to turn them back to the path of life.
What Proverbs 6:16-19 does not say
The passage does not say that God hates the people who do these things in the sense of writing them off from the start. Proverbs is a book of instruction addressed to a son, and the father who writes it is trying to keep his child off a destructive road. The warning presupposes that the reader can still turn. To say that God hates a thing is not the same as saying he has abandoned every person who has ever done it. Scripture everywhere holds together God's settled opposition to evil and his mercy toward the repentant.
The passage also does not establish a ranked scale of sins for us to use on other people. It is tempting to read the list and immediately think of someone who fits it. That is exactly the wrong use. The proverb is addressed to the one reading it. Its first application is to my own eyes, my own tongue, my own hands, my own heart, my own feet, my own testimony, my own effect on the people around me. Jesus made this point sharply when he warned against noticing the speck in a brother's eye while ignoring the beam in one's own.
A common misreading treats the seven items as a checklist that can be discharged by avoiding external behaviors. On that reading, a person who has never committed violence and never testified falsely can feel safe. But the list begins with haughty eyes and a heart that devises, both of which are invisible. The proverb reaches inside. Another misreading treats the list as merely cultural, as ancient Near Eastern advice with no claim on modern readers. But the text grounds the list in the character of Yahweh, not the customs of Israel, and that grounding does not expire.
Finally, the passage does not teach that hatred of evil is a character flaw to be overcome. Some popular spirituality treats all judgment as unhealthy and all aversion as bigotry. Proverbs 8:13 says the opposite: "The fear of Yahweh is to hate evil." To love God is to hate what he hates. Psalm 5:4-6 agrees, saying, "For you are not a God who has pleasure in wickedness. Evil can't live with you." The call is not to be nicer than God. It is to have our loves and hates conformed to his.
Biblical fidelity check
The passage establishes that these seven things are detested by Yahweh and are incompatible with the wisdom he commends. It establishes the unity of the list: a whole person is described, from eyes to feet to influence. It establishes that destructive speech and the sowing of discord are as serious in God's sight as violence and false testimony, which are the more obviously scandalous items. It does not establish that these seven are the only things God hates, nor does it give us a ranking system to apply to others. The number seven signals completeness, not an exhaustive catalogue.
A common misreading is to treat the list as a list of big sins from which ordinary believers are exempt. That reading fails because the first item, haughty eyes, is a condition of the heart that every person can recognize, and the last item, sowing discord, is something most of us have done with a careless word. The correct reading lets the proverb search us. The gospel does not soften the list; it provides the only remedy for the people the list describes, which is why the New Testament can call liars and the sexually immoral and the cowardly to repentance and to life.
Other passages that speak to Proverbs 6:16-19
Several related studies help place this list in the wider biblical story. The theme of revelation and disclosure runs through Scripture, and Apokalypsis: revelation unveiling and disclosure: A Biblical Guide traces how God makes his will known to his people. For the setting of John's vision in which liars and the abominable are named among those outside the city, see Revelation 1:1–3: What This Book Really Is. The language of abomination also appears in the prophetic books, and Daniel 9:24–27 Prophecy: The Seventy Weeks and the Abomination examines one of its most disputed uses. Finally, Epiphany and the revelation of Christ to the nations: A Biblical Guide considers how the truth of God goes out to every people, which is the opposite of sowing discord among brothers.
Frequently asked questions
What are the seven things God hates in Proverbs 6:16-19?
The passage names haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness who utters lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. The opening line builds from six to seven to signal a complete catalogue. Read together, the seven describe one kind of person rather than seven unrelated faults, which is why the list ends with the fracturing of a community.
Does God hate sinners or only their sin?
The passage says God hates these things and calls them an abomination to him. It does not say he has no concern for the people who do them. Proverbs is addressed to a son who can still choose a different path, and the rest of Scripture calls sinners to repentance and promises mercy to those who turn. Christians have differed over how to state this precisely, but the text itself holds God's settled opposition to evil together with his patience toward those who repent.
Why is sowing discord listed last?
It appears to be the summary of the other six. Pride, lying, scheming, and false testimony all produce division in the end, and the sower of discord is the person who cultivates that division deliberately. Placing it last gives the list its destination. The warning is not against honest disagreement or against reporting wrongdoing; it is against the intentional planting of suspicion and strife among people who should be at peace.
