Proverbs 6:12-19

After the sluggard, his opposite — and he's worse. "A naughty person" — old English for a worthless man, the kind other Scriptures call "a man of Belial" (1 Samuel 25:25): good for nothing — except that he works tirelessly at it. Where laziness sleeps, wickedness puts in overtime: the wink that signals the accomplice, the foot-signal, the finger-code — a whole covert language of mischief — and underneath it all a heart that "deviseth mischief continually." You know this man. Every workplace and, sadly, some churches have him: nothing straight about him, everything an angle, always stirring, and the dead giveaway of the breed in the last clause — he soweth discord. Wherever he goes, people who got along stop getting along. He fishes in troubled waters, and he troubles them himself first. Verse 15 closes his file the way 29:1 will: suddenly, broken, without remedy — a man who spends his life engineering breaches gets broken past piecing back together.

Then Solomon does something rare in Scripture: he hands us a list of what God hates. Let that word stand at full strength. Our generation has heard so much (rightly) about the love of God that it can hardly believe the holiness of God includes hatred — but a God who loves children must hate what shatters them; a God of truth must hate lies. Here are His seven, and notice they walk down the body of a man:

1. A proud look — first on the list, because pride is the sin of sins, the lifted eyes that displace God. And it's the temper, not just the face — pride can wear a humble costume, where it is doubly odious. 2. A lying tongue — every willful false impression, with or without words. There are lying looks and lying silences too. 3. Hands that shed innocent blood — and the first innocent blood on earth was a brother's. 4. An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations — the heart sits dead-center in the list, because it is the fountain the other six flow from. God judges the planning, not just the doing: the thought of foolishness is sin (24:9). 5. Feet swift in running to mischief — eager for it; and feet quick toward evil are always slow toward the house of God. 6. A false witness that speaketh lies — lying upgraded to perjury: untruth plus injustice plus an oath. 7. And he that soweth discord among brethren.

Stop at the seventh, because the structure makes it the climax — and it repeats verse 14 on purpose, a double stamp. Of all things on God's hate list, the summit is the man who splits up brethren: the gossip who passes the report, the agitator who divides a family, the church member who recruits factions. We'd have ranked murder last; God ranks the discord-sower. Why? Because it is the most God-opposite sin on the list — He is the God of peace, and "blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matthew 5:9). The old observation is worth its weight: this hate-list runs like a photographic negative of the Beatitudes — "the LORD hates a proud look" answers to "blessed are the poor in spirit," and the discord-sower is the exact converse of the peacemaker. What God hates and what God blesses are the same list, printed in reverse.

One more turn of the coin: every member on the list — eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet — is God's own handiwork, built to declare His glory. Which means the believer gets the bright side of the seven: every faculty you have is an opportunity to please God every time you use it. The same eyes can look proud or look compassion; the same tongue can cut or heal; the same feet can run to mischief or run with the gospel of peace.