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• Describes an act someone carries out rather than a character someone has, so it can be used with no moral fault in view at all: Rachel says she has strained and struggled against her sister and come out ahead, and names her son from the word.Gen 30:8
• When it does describe wrongdoing, it targets clever scheming rather than a bent life: the tangled counsel of shrewd men is cut short in a hurry.Job 5:13
• Can be said of God himself: because it names an action rather than a trait, poetry uses it for the way God answers a person in kind, something never said with the other word.2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26

• Both picture wrongdoing as something bent out of line instead of running straight, and Proverbs sets them side by side in one breath so that together they rule out any crookedness in wisdom's speech.Pro 8:8
• Both stand in the same line of the psalm-song about how God meets people: the person who deals crookedly with God finds God dealing with him in the same twisted manner.2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26

• Labels a person's settled character, and usually names the part of the person that has gone bent: the heart a psalmist refuses to keep, or the lips of the man Proverbs pities.Psa 101:4Pro 17:20Pro 19:1
• Carries the standard comparison of Proverbs, where the crooked man is the losing side of a contrast with someone who walks honestly: better to be poor and straight than crooked and rich.Pro 28:6Pro 19:1
• Marks both what God rejects and where the crooked life ends up: the LORD finds such a person detestable, their paths run off course, and thorns and traps wait along the road.Pro 11:20Pro 2:15Pro 22:5
• Widens from an individual to a whole community: Moses' song brands an entire generation of Israel with this word.Deu 32:5

• reaches well beyond crooked character to a physical, bodily struggle: two rivals wound around each other like the strands of a rope, which is the picture behind the naming of NaphtaliGen 30:8
• is the one of the two that is ever said of God, describing how he answers a crooked person in kind and matches his own dealings to the twist he is met with2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26
• can single out particular people as twisted, the shrewd schemers whose counsel is swept away, and can just as easily be used to deny any twist at all, as wisdom does when she claims there is nothing bent in anything she saysJob 5:13Pro 8:8

• both take the same picture, something wound out of straight, and turn it into a moral charge against people, so the fault named is deviation from what is straight rather than any physical shapeJob 5:13Deu 32:5
• both stand beside the same partner word for "crooked", joining with it to make a single accusation, so the twist and the bend are habitually named togetherPsa 18:26Deu 32:5

• is a doubled-up, heightened form that appears only once, and it does not allow for degrees: the charge is not that a people is somewhat bent but that it is utterly convolutedDeu 32:5
• passes its verdict on a whole generation at once, naming the settled condition of a community rather than an act anyone performs or a scheme anyone laysDeu 32:5

• What gets twisted is never fiber but people and what comes out of them: a long rivalry, a scheming mind, a spoken saying.Gen 30:8Job 5:13Pro 8:8
• Carries a verdict rather than a description, because a good life is pictured as running straight, so calling thinking or speech twisted is calling it "crooked."Job 5:13Pro 8:8
• Can name a struggle between two rivals wound around each other, which is how Rachel sums up her contest with her sister and how Naphtali gets his name.Gen 30:8
• Takes the image to its boldest point by aiming it at God, who answers a crooked person in the shape of that person's own crookedness, a line scholars still argue over.2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26

• Both rest on the same picture of strands wound around one another so that nothing runs straight: the noun is the finished twisted strand, and the verb is the winding itself, here two lives locked around each other.Exo 39:3Gen 30:8

• Names a thing you can pick up: fiber spun and twisted into a strand, of whatever material is at hand, from the coarse waste left over from working flax to linen to gold beaten thin and cut into strips.Exo 39:3Jdg 16:9Ezk 40:3
• Almost never matters for its own sake, because its whole job is to hold something else in place: a seal worn at the neck as a signature, sacred gear tied onto the high priest, a blue strand set on the corner of an Israelite's clothing.Gen 38:18Exo 28:28Num 15:38
• Can be a working instrument rather than a fastener, since a flexible linen strand is what a surveyor measures a building with.Ezk 40:3
• Stays a physical object in every scene where it appears, carrying no verdict on anyone's character: it is produced, handed over, tied on, snapped, or held out, and nothing more.Gen 38:25Exo 39:21Exo 39:31

• Reaches far beyond a contest between rivals: it brands a person, a plan, or spoken words as bent away from straight, and it keeps steady company with the word for "crooked" when it does.2Sa 22:27Pro 8:8
• Works as the test of honest speech, stated as an absence: wisdom's claim is that nothing in what she says is twisted.Pro 8:8
• Covers hidden scheming rather than open struggle: the counsel of twisted people is cut short, right beside the clever being caught in their own cleverness.Job 5:13
• Describes how God answers a bent person: toward someone crooked he shows himself twisted, meeting the twist with a twist rather than straightening the way out for them.2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26

• Both draw on the picture of two things wound tightly around each other, and Rachel uses them in one breath to name her contest with her sister over children.Gen 30:8
• Neither describes a friendly effort: in the verse they share, the struggle has a winner, since Rachel adds that she has prevailed and names the child born from the fight after it.Gen 30:8
• In that verse the twisting image lands on people, not on objects: it pictures a relationship the two sisters are locked into, not cord or thread being wound.Gen 30:8

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• describes a twisting that is always figurative: crooked, devious, or perverse conduct and speech, and the way God answers the crooked in kind2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26Job 5:13Pro 8:8
• extends to a twisting struggle, the wrestling of one person against anotherGen 30:8

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• names the literal twisting of strands together to make strong linen cord, the technical word for the twined linen of the tabernacle, and never carries a moral or figurative senseExo 26:1Exo 28:6Exo 39:29

• pictures two parties wound around each other like strands in a rope, so it can name a rivalry or a wrestling match between themGen 30:8
• lets the crookedness shade into cleverness, labeling the shrewd schemers whose plans God pulls apartJob 5:13
• marks words themselves as bent out of shape, judging what comes out of a mouth rather than the person or the deedPro 8:8
• turns the twist back on the twister, claiming that God answers a crooked man in the very shape of the man's own crookedness2Sa 22:27

• both make a bent shape the picture of moral fault, measuring a person against a straight line rather than against a rule broken, so each can brand a heart, a character, or a way of speaking as warped out of truePro 12:81Sa 20:30Job 5:13Pro 8:8
• both are bold enough to put God on the twisting side, which startles readers in each case: he bends a sufferer's roads so every path runs the wrong way, and he is said to deal with the twisted in a twisted wayLam 3:9Psa 18:26

• is the fixed word of Israel's confession, standing beside "we have sinned" whenever a people or a person owns guilt before God, a setting the twisting word never enters1Ki 8:47Dan 9:5Psa 106:6
• takes something and bends it, so the crookedness is an act done to a thing: a way is perverted, what was right is made crooked, even the face of the earth is warpedJer 3:21Job 33:27Isa 24:1
• can be purely physical with no fault in view at all, describing a body doubled over by grief or by dreadPsa 38:6Isa 21:3
• covers ordinary wrong done by one person to another, at home in plain palace and courtroom speech where no picture of twisting is feltEst 1:162Sa 19:19

• pictures two parties wound around each other in a contest, which is how Rachel names the long struggle with her sister that gave Naphtali his nameGen 30:8
• labels people themselves as devious schemers whose counsel is bent, a settled description of what someone is rather than something done to an objectJob 5:13
• is the word for God dealing with a crooked person in kind, matching the twist with a twist so the scheme comes back on the schemer2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26

• both describe speech and character bent away from what is straight, and Proverbs sets each of them right beside the word for "crooked"Pro 17:20Pro 8:8
• each carries a physical picture into a moral verdict, so wrongdoing is named as a shape gone wrong, something pulled out of true, rather than as a rule brokenAmo 5:7Job 5:13

• tears a place down so completely that it is left upended in ruin, the word used for the destruction of Sodom, the toppling of thrones, and the doom announced over NinevehGen 19:25Hag 2:22Jon 3:4
• turns one thing into something else altogether, so river water becomes blood, the sea becomes dry ground, and mourning becomes dancingExo 7:17Psa 66:6Psa 30:11
• keeps a plain physical use with no moral charge at all, a barley loaf rolling over and flattening a tent, a dish wiped clean and set face down, the hair on a sore going whiteJdg 7:132Ki 21:13Lev 13:3
• describes fighters turning back and giving way, a reversal of direction rather than of shapePsa 78:9

• This word passes judgment on people and on what they say. A schemer's plan and a speaker's words can both be called twisted, that is, bent away from what is straight and honest, and Wisdom insists there is nothing of the kind in her speech.Job 5:13Pro 8:8
• It can also describe how God answers a devious person, meeting the crooked in a way that matches their crookedness, so that the twist comes back on the one who started it.2Sa 22:27Psa 18:26

• The two words meet in exactly one verse, and the meeting is the whole connection between them. Rachel says she has been wound up in a struggle with her sister, the verb usually rendered "wrestled", and out of that very word she names the boy. The verb supplies the sound and the sense the name carries from then on, which is why the name still tells the story of the rivalry it came out of.Gen 30:8

• This word is a label, never a description of anyone's conduct. It identifies Jacob's sixth son, then the family and the whole tribe descended from him, in birth lists, in genealogies, in censuses, and in war musters.Gen 35:25Gen 46:24Num 1:43Jdg 5:18
• It also becomes a piece of the map. Whole stretches of Galilee, an administrative district, a boundary line, and even a city gate are called by this name, which is something no verb of twisting can be.Jos 19:321Ki 15:20Isa 9:1Ezk 48:34
• The twisting picture inside the name goes quiet once the naming scene is over. In the tribal lists, the officer rolls, and the town lists the name is only a name, and nothing about struggle or crookedness is in view.Num 26:48Jos 21:321Ch 27:19