The Bible does use the word, and it does not flinch. But read the lists closely and a pattern shows up: everything God hates is something that wrecks a human being.
What does God hate? Proverbs 6 names seven: pride, lying, violence against the innocent, scheming, rushing into harm, false testimony and stirring up conflict. Every one of them is something people do to other people.
The prophets add religious show that ignores the poor, robbery dressed up as business, and a husband who betrays and discards his wife. God hates what destroys people because He loves people. He never tells us He hates any group of human beings, and Jesus makes that plain.
Some people ask this to know what to avoid. Others ask because they were told God hates them. This page is for both.
“There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”
Proverbs 6:16 to 19 · NIVThe “six, even seven” pattern is a Hebrew numerical saying, the same shape Amos uses when he names three sins, and then four. It is not arithmetic. It means: here is a full list, watch the end of it.
Notice how the list moves. It walks down a body, eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet, then turns outward to the liar in court and the one who sets a community against itself. It starts inside one person and ends with a neighborhood torn apart.
Looking down on people. Pride comes first because it makes the rest feel justified. See what haughty eyes means.
Words that bend reality for your benefit, paid for by the person lied to. See what the Bible says about lying.
Violence against someone who did nothing to deserve it. God stands with the one who cannot defend themselves.
Harm planned ahead, in a mind working out how to use somebody.
Not a slow slide, but running toward the chance to take advantage.
Lying where it costs someone their name, their property or their life. In Israel's courts a false witness could get an innocent person killed.
Setting people against each other on purpose through gossip and manipulation.
People often mix the two up. The seven deadly sins are a later church list. This one is Scripture's own.
Read each line and ask who gets hurt. Every item on the list has a victim. That is the clue to the whole question.
English hears “hate” as a feeling of loathing. The Hebrew word has a wider range, and some hard verses make sense once you see it.
To hate, detest, be hostile to. It can also mean to set aside, to love less, to not choose. Context decides which.
The King James says Leah was “hated.” The NIV says she “was not loved.” Jacob did not despise her. He preferred Rachel, and the word covers that.
A law about a man with two wives, one loved and one not. The same word describes a preference, and the law protects the son of the wife who was passed over.
Jesus says to “hate father and mother.” Matthew 10:37 gives the same saying as loving them “more than me.” The idiom is about priority, not contempt.
That brings us to the verse people ask about most. “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” Paul writes in Romans 9:13, quoting Malachi 1. Read Malachi and the subject is nations, Israel and Edom, and the verse goes straight on to talk about Edom's hill country. Paul's point is that God chose a line through which the Messiah would come, “not by works but by him who calls.”
It is about which people carried the promise through history, not a verdict on one man's soul decided before birth. Genesis itself ends the brothers' story with Esau running to meet Jacob and throwing his arms around him. We work through the whole passage in why God hated Esau and in predestination in the Bible.
Where the King James says Leah was “hated” in Genesis 29:31, what does the NIV say?
Same Hebrew word, sane. Jacob loved Rachel more, and the translators render it as “not loved” because that is what the story describes. And notice what God does next: He sees Leah and blesses her.
Every post here is free to read. If this one helped you, you can help keep it that way. Pick an amount and finish on Stripe's secure checkout.
Change your amount, update your card, or cancel anytime. Enter the email you give with and Stripe sends you a secure link.
Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
This one surprises churchgoers. Some of the strongest hate language in the Bible is aimed at worship services.
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me.” … “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
Amos 5:21, 24 · NIVAmos preached in the northern kingdom in a season of money and busy religion. The festivals were full, and earlier in the same book he describes the needy sold for a pair of sandals. God was not tired of music. He was tired of music used as cover.
Isaiah says it in one line: “For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing.” That is Isaiah 61:8, in the same chapter Jesus read aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth when He announced good news to the poor and freedom for the oppressed.
Festivals, offerings, songs and harps, brought by people who were cheating the poor on Monday and singing about it on the Sabbath.
Justice that keeps flowing like a river. Honest scales, fair courts, and the vulnerable treated like they belong to God, because they do.
This cuts both ways. Amos is not saying worship does not matter or telling Israel to skip the gathering. He is saying the two cannot be separated. Worship that leaves how we treat people untouched is not worship in the sense God means, and loud praise on Sunday never makes up for the rest of the week.
“I hate divorce” is one of the best known lines in the Bible, and it has been used in ways the prophet never intended.
“For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away.”
“For I hate divorce,” says the LORD, the God of Israel.
“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect.”
“For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence.”
Why the difference? The Hebrew is hard. The United Bible Societies' translator's handbook on Malachi notes that “the Hebrew text has “he hates””, not “I hate.” Many versions adjust the vowels to make it first person. Others read it as describing the husband. Good scholars land on both sides, and the question is honestly open.
What is not in question is the context. Two verses earlier Malachi says the LORD is witness “between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.” Men were discarding their wives, and in that world a woman sent away could be left with nothing. On either translation, what God names is betrayal and violence done to the one who should have been protected.
So yes, God cares deeply about marriage and hates what a thrown away covenant does to people. It is a word to anyone thinking of walking out casually. It is never a chain to keep someone in danger. Quoting this verse at a wife who is being abused points it at exactly the person it was written to defend. We go further into this in biblical reasons for divorce.
Safety comes first, for you and for your children. God is not asking you to stay where you are being hurt, and leaving to get safe is not a sin.
If you are in danger right now, call 911. In the United States the National Domestic Violence Hotline is free, confidential and open around the clock at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. And if you want someone to pray with you, reach out to us here.
“The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion.”
Psalm 11:5 · NIVPsalm 5:5 says something similar: “You hate all who do wrong.” Take the other side at its strongest. Some teachers say God hates sinners as well as sin, and point to these verses. They are right that the verses say it, and right that “love the sinner, hate the sin” is not a Bible verse.
Here is how we read them. First, these are psalms. They are prayers and songs, often from someone under attack, using the strong vocabulary of their world. Psalm 11 is a psalm of David, written while the wicked are bending their bows at the upright. Second, the Hebrew word carries rejection and distance, and the line right before Psalm 5:5 says it: with God “evil people are not welcome.” Evil cannot stay close to Him. Third, and this settles it for us, Jesus is the final and full revelation of the Father.
And Jesus says the Father “is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” He tells us to love our enemies so that we look like Him. John writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” Paul writes, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” When a psalm and Jesus seem to pull in different directions, Jesus tells us what God is like.
God does not hate people. Not you, not your neighbor, not any group of human beings. The idea that He does is wrong, and it has done real damage. These verses have been painted on signs and preached at people already drowning in shame. That is a misuse of Scripture, full stop.
We also refuse the opposite error. God's love is not indifference. A love that shrugs at abuse, violence and lies is not love. God hates what the wicked do because of what it does to the people they do it to, and He will not let it go on forever. Psalm 5:6 says He destroys those who tell lies. The end of that road is destruction, perishing, not endless torment. Eternal life is a gift, offered to everyone, including the ones who did the damage.
For where evil came from, see did God create evil. For how His refusal of evil fits His kindness, see the difference between grace and mercy.
Hold the Proverbs 6 list up next to the last week of Jesus' life. Proud rulers looking down on Him. Schemes worked out in private. False witnesses whose stories did not even agree. Hands that shed innocent blood. A crowd stirred up against Him. He walked straight through all seven.
And what came out of His mouth was “Father, forgive them.” That is the clearest look we will ever get at how God holds these two things together. He refused every one of those evils, and He loved the people doing them enough to die for them.
So when the Bible says God hates something, hear a parent saying, “I hate what that drug is doing to my son.” The hate is aimed at the thing. The love is aimed at the son. And God's hatred of evil is never our permission to hate people. There is a right kind of anger, and it always protects someone.
For more on this ground, see what sin is, God is love, and what we believe at Sound of Heaven.
God hates pride, lies, violence, scheming, false testimony, division, empty worship and betrayal, because every one of them destroys a person He loves, and Jesus shows us a God who refuses evil and still gives Himself for the ones who do it.
He does not, and we would love to tell you why in person. Send us your question or your prayer request and someone at Sound of Heaven will reach out.
Proverbs 6:16 to 19 lists seven things: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet quick to rush into evil, a false witness, and a person who stirs up conflict. The prophets add worship that ignores justice (Amos 5:21), robbery and wrongdoing (Isaiah 61:8), and a husband who betrays his wife (Malachi 2:16). Every item harms another person. God hates what destroys people because He loves people.
No. Psalm 5:5 and Psalm 11:5 use the language of hate toward the wicked, but they are poetry, prayers written under attack, and the Hebrew word carries rejection and distance as much as emotion. Jesus is the final word on what God is like, and He says the Father is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. John 3:16 says God so loved the world, and Romans 5:8 says Christ died for us while we were still sinners. God opposes evil without hating people.
Malachi 2:16 is harder than the famous phrase suggests. The Hebrew reads he hates, and translations divide: the King James and NASB 1995 make it God hating divorce, while the NIV and ESV describe a man who hates and divorces his wife and does violence to her. Either way, the context is men discarding the wife of their youth. God cares about covenant faithfulness and hates betrayal. The verse is never a reason to keep anyone in an abusive home.
Romans 9:13 quotes Malachi 1:2 to 3, where the subject is two nations, Israel and Edom. The Hebrew word for hate can mean to choose one over another, the same way Genesis 29:31 says Leah was not loved compared to Rachel. Paul is explaining that God chose a line through which the Messiah would come, not by works but by His call. It is not a statement that God despised Esau as a person or sealed his destiny before birth.
No. The seven things in Proverbs 6 are Scripture's own list, and they are mostly about harm done to others: lying, violence, scheming, false testimony and division. The seven deadly sins, usually pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, are a later list from church tradition. There is overlap, especially pride, but they are separate lists from separate sources. Only one is in the Bible.