6:18a

a heart that devises wicked schemes: The word translated here as heart can refer to a person’s emotions, thoughts, or will. In this context, it refers to the source of a person’s thoughts. For English speakers, this is the mind, so the Good News Translation has:

a mind that thinks up wicked plans (Good News Translation)

In other languages, thinking or planning may be done by other organs of the body (see the note on 4:23a). The whole phrase is a figure of speech (synecdoche) that refers to:

those who make evil plans (Contemporary English Version)

6:18b

feet that run swiftly to evil: The word feet here is another example of synecdoche, in which a part represents the whole. In this case the word feet represents the person who does the action. The phrase feet that run swiftly to evil means that the person is eager or in a hurry to do what is wrong. It does not mean that the person runs quickly. The Contemporary English Version expresses this as:

those who…are quick to do wrong (Contemporary English Version)

© 2012, 2016, 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.