Proverbs 6:13

Proverbs 6:13, in plain English

This wicked person communicates their malice through subtle, nonverbal signals—winking eyes, moving feet in suggestive ways, pointing fingers—all designed to manipulate or mock others.

Why it's here

In a culture where many couldn't read, body language was a primary communication tool. The teacher describes someone who works through signals and hints rather than open speech, which made them harder to catch and prove guilty of wrongdoing. It's the kind of sneaky behavior that spreads poison while maintaining plausible deniability.

Who's speaking

The wisdom teacher, painting a vivid picture of how the wicked person operates.

Where it sits in the story

This echoes throughout Scripture in warnings about false prophets and deceivers who work through cunning rather than force. Jesus warned about people who seem righteous on the outside but work secretly (Matthew 23).

The scholarly reading

His nonverbal communication is equally deceptive: winking eyes, gesturing with his feet, pointing with his fingers—all nonverbal signals coordinating deceit.

Language and setting

The Hebrew participles here—qoretz (winking), migish (speaking with feet), morah (pointing)—suggest habitual, practiced deception. The catalog of body parts (eyes, feet, fingers) is comprehensive, suggesting that his entire embodied self participates in duplicitous signaling. In honor-shame Mediterranean cultures, such gestures were loaded with communicative significance. The winking (qoraz means to blink/wink—compare Psalm 35:19) was a gesture of conspiracy and false intimacy. This is nonverbal grammar of manipulation—the deceiver using body language to create false alliance with his target.

Voice

The sage, completing the perverse person's portrait through somatic analysis.

Significance

This connects to Jesus's teaching that 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks' (Matthew 12:34)—the recognition that deception emerges from and propagates through the entire person, not merely intellect. The emphasis on coordinated bodily deception appears in Paul's warning about 'smooth talk and flattery' that deceive 'the hearts of the innocent' (Romans 16:18).

11and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit.

12A worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth,

13winking his eyes, speaking with his feet, and pointing with his fingers.

14With deceit in his heart he devises evil; he continually sows discord.

15Therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in an instant he will be shattered beyond recovery.

Read all of Proverbs 6 — Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise. Nature teaches what lectures can't.