iqqesh

The standard lexicons treat עִקֵּשׁ as a verbal adjective from the root עקשׁ, "to twist, make crooked," and gloss it uniformly as twisted, distorted, crooked (BDB; HALOT; DCH). Every biblical occurrence is figurative and ethical: the lexicons arrange the entry by the governed noun, distinguishing crookedness predicated of דֶּרֶךְ / אֹרַח (Prov 2:15; 22:5; 28:6), of לֵב / לֵבָב (Ps 101:4; Prov 11:20; 17:20), and of שְׂפָתַיִם (Prov 19:1), alongside independent uses of persons (Deut 32:5; 2 Sam 22:27 = Ps 18:26; Prov 8:8). The adjective belongs to the wisdom literature's central straight-versus-crooked path metaphor, where it stands in fixed antithesis to יָשָׁר and תָּמִים and in parallel with פְּתַלְתֹּל (Deut 32:5) and נָלוֹז (Prov 2:15); Waltke and Fox both treat the two-ways scheme as the organizing frame of Proverbs 1-9 and of the antithetical sayings that follow. In 2 Sam 22:27 // Ps 18:26 the adjective anchors a deliberate paronomasia in the divine-recompense sequence, answered by the verb (Ps תִּתְפַּתָּל, 2 Sam תִּתַּפָּל), a textual divergence widely discussed in the commentaries on the parallel poems; the wordplay describes God's dealings as matched to the character of the one he meets rather than ascribing crookedness to God. The Septuagint's regular equivalent is σκολιός, and Phil 2:15 quotes Deut 32:5 LXX (γενεᾶς σκολιᾶς καὶ διεστραμμένης), carrying the Hebrew idiom into the New Testament. The rare proper name Ikkesh (2 Sam 23:26; 1 Chr 11:28; 27:9) is spelled identically but is treated separately.