Aqov shares its root, ayin-qof-bet, with Ya'akov (Jacob), the heel-grabber, born gripping his brother's heel and later earning the name a second time when Esav says he has aqab-ed me, supplanted me, these two times (Genesis 27:36). The verb pictures ground that is uneven at the heel, terrain that turns an ankle precisely where a foot expects to land solid. It is not the ordinary Hebrew word for a lie spoken. It is a word for a slant built into the walking surface itself.

Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) reaches for exactly this word to describe the lev: the heart is aqov above all things, and desperately sick, who can know it, Jeremiah 17:9. The choice is deliberate. He is not saying the heart occasionally deceives, the way a man occasionally lies. He is saying the heart is graded terrain, sloped from the foundation to serve itself, so that walking on it feels level even while it is carrying you off course. Hosea uses the same picture corporately: like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt akably, treacherously, against Me (Hosea 6:8), a whole people walking crooked ground together and calling it the path. The word never describes a single false step. It describes the shape of the ground under every step.