עָוָה
a.vah
to pervert
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# H5753B (עָוָה) — "To Pervert" The Hebrew verb *avah* (עָוָה) carries the fundamental meaning "to pervert," indicating an action of twisting something away from its proper course or intended state. With ten occurrences in the biblical text, this word belongs to a modest but significant vocabulary cluster related to distortion and deviation. The verb functions to describe instances where something—whether a judgment, a path, or proper conduct—is bent or corrupted from its correct form. The term's consistent semantic field centers on wrongful alteration rather than mere disagreement or difference of opinion. When something is "perverted" in biblical usage, it implies not simply that it has changed, but that it has been deliberately or harmfully twisted into something improper or unjust. This distinction makes *avah* particularly valuable for contexts involving moral or judicial corruption, where the original right order has been specifically distorted. Given its concentrated usage across the biblical corpus, *avah* represents a precise theological and ethical concept: the deliberate or corrupt transformation of what is right into what is wrong. The word's relative rarity (compared to more common terms for sin or transgression) suggests it carries specialized weight, employed when biblical writers wish to emphasize the nature of wrongdoing as a corruption of established standards rather than mere violation or rebellion.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
10 total occurrences across the text
Memucan answered before the king and the princes, “Vashti the queen has not done wrong to just the king, but also to all the princes, and to all the people who are in all the provinces of the King Ahasuerus.
Psalms 106:6We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly.
Jeremiah 9:5Friends deceive each other, and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies. They weary themselves commiting iniquity.
Daniel 9:5we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your ordinances.
1 Samuel 20:30Then Saul’s anger burned against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse rebellious woman, don’t I know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?
2 Samuel 7:14I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men;
2 Samuel 19:19He said to the king, “Don’t let my lord impute iniquity to me, or remember that which your servant did perversely the day that my lord the king went out of Jerusalem, that the king should take it to his heart.
2 Samuel 24:17David spoke to Yahweh when he saw the angel who struck the people, and said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me, and against my father’s house.”
1 Kings 8:47yet if they repent in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of those who carried them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned, and have done perversely; we have dealt wickedly;’
2 Chronicles 6:37yet if they come to their senses in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of their captivity, saying, ‘We have sinned, we have done perversely, and have dealt wickedly;’