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Proverbs of Solomon
Proverbs › Chapter 11 › Proverbs 11:20

What Does Proverbs 11:20 Mean?

Those who are of a perverse heart are an abomination to the LORD,But the blameless in their ways are His delight.Proverbs 11:20 · NKJV

This verse repeats the formula that opened the chapter at verse 1, with the subject changed.

Quick answer

The same pair of terms from verse 1, now aimed at the heart instead of the scales. What God detests and what delights Him are stated a second time.

Read both lines

The two key words here are identical in Hebrew to the two in verse 1: abomination to the LORD and His delight. Verse 1 applied them to a merchant's weights; this verse applies them to a person's interior. That bracket is doing something. A chapter that begins with fraud in the marketplace and returns twenty verses later to crookedness in the heart is saying the two are the same problem observed at different distances. What shows up in the bag started somewhere, and the LORD's pleasure and displeasure attach to both ends of it.

Related: Proverbs 11:1 · Proverbs 6:16–19 · Proverbs 4:23

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.

Go Deeper

If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.