Proverbs 10:6

10:6 Blessings ¹  are on the head of the righteous,

but the speech ²  of the wicked conceals ³  violence. ⁴ 

Psalms 107:42

107:42 When the godly see this, they rejoice,

and every sinner ⁵  shuts his mouth.

Ecclesiastes 10:12-14

Words and Works of Wise Men and Fools

10:12 The words of a wise person ⁶  win him ⁷  favor, ⁸ 

but the words ⁹  of a fool are self-destructive. ¹⁰ 

10:13 At the beginning his words ¹¹  are foolish

and at the end ¹²  his talk ¹³  is wicked madness, ¹⁴ 

10:14 yet a fool keeps on babbling. ¹⁵ 

No one knows what will happen;

who can tell him what will happen in the future? ¹⁶ 

Matthew 12:34-37

12:34 Offspring of vipers! How are you able to say anything good, since you are evil? For the mouth speaks from what fills the heart. 12:35 The good person ¹⁷  brings good things out of his ¹⁸  good treasury, ¹⁹  and the evil person brings evil things out of his evil treasury. 12:36 I ²⁰  tell you that on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every worthless word they speak. 12:37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

James 3:5-8

3:5 So too the tongue is a small part of the body, ²¹  yet it has great pretensions. ²²  Think ²³  how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze. 3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ²⁴  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ²⁵  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ²⁶ 

3:7 For every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and sea creature ²⁷  is subdued and has been subdued by humankind. ²⁸  3:8 But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless ²⁹  evil, full of deadly poison.

¹ sn The word “blessings” has the sense of gifts, enrichments, that is, the rewards or the results of being righteous. The blessings come either from the people the righteous deal with, or from God. CEV understands the blessings as praise for good behavior (“Everyone praises good people”).

² tn Heb “the mouth.” The term פֶּה (peh, “mouth”) functions as a metonymy of cause for speech.

³ tn Heb “covers.” Behind the speech of the wicked is aggressive violence (W. McKane, Proverbs [OTL], 422).

⁴ tn The syntax of this line is ambiguous. The translation takes “the mouth of the wicked” as the nominative subject and “violence” as the accusative direct object; however, the subject might be “violence,” hence: “violence covers the mouth of the wicked” (cf. KJV, ASV, NIV).

⁵ tn Heb “all evil,” which stands metonymically for those who do evil.

⁶ tn Heb “of a wise man’s mouth.”

⁷ tn The phrase “win him” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn Or “are gracious.” The antithetical parallelism suggests that חֵן (khen) does not denote “gracious character” but “[gain] favor” (e.g., Gen 39:21; Exod 3:21; 11:3; 12:36; Prov 3:4, 34; 13:15; 22:1; 28:23; Eccl 9:11); cf. HALOT 332 s.v. חֵן 2; BDB 336 s.v. חֵן 2. The LXX, on the other hand, rendered חֶן with χάρις (caris, “gracious”). The English versions are divided: “are gracious” (KJV, YLT, ASV, NASB, NIV) and “win him favor” (NEB, RSV, NRSV, NAB, MLB, NJPS, Moffatt).

⁹ tn Heb “lips.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “consume him”; or “engulf him.” The verb I בלע (“to swallow”) creates a striking wordplay on the homonymic root II בלע (“to speak eloquently”; HALOT 134-35 s.v בלע). Rather than speaking eloquently (II בלע, “to speak eloquently”), the fool utters words that are self-destructive (I בלע, “to swallow, engulf”).

¹¹ tn Heb “the words of his mouth.”

¹² sn The terms “beginning” and “end” form a merism, a figure of speech in which two opposites are contrasted to indicate totality (e.g., Deut 6:7; Ps 139:8; Eccl 3:2-8). The words of a fool are madness from “start to finish.”

¹³ tn Heb “his mouth.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “madness of evil.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “and the fool multiplies words.” This line is best taken as the third line of a tricola encompassing 10:13-14a (NASB, NRSV, NJPS, Moffatt) rather than the first line of a tricola encompassing 10:14 (KJV, NEB, RSV, NAB, ASV, NIV). Several versions capture the sense of this line well: “a fool prates on and on” (Moffatt) and “Yet the fool talks and talks!” (NJPS).

¹⁶ tn Heb “after him”; or “after he [dies].”

¹⁷ tn The Greek text reads here ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpos). The term is generic referring to any person.

¹⁸ tn Grk “the”; the Greek article has been translated here and in the following clause (“his evil treasury”) as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

¹⁹ sn The treasury here is a metaphorical reference to a person’s heart (cf. BDAG 456 s.v. θησαυρός 1.b and the parallel passage in Luke 6:45).

²⁰ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

²¹ tn Grk “a small member.”

²² tn Grk “boasts of great things.”

²³ tn Grk “Behold.”

²⁴ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

²⁵ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

²⁶ sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36).

²⁷ tn Grk (plurals), “every kind of animals and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures.”

²⁸ tn Grk “the human species.”

²⁹ tc Most mss (C Ψ 1739^c Ï as well as a few versions and fathers) read “uncontrollable” (ἀκατασχετόν, akatasceton), while the most important witnesses (א A B K P 1739* latt) have “restless” (ἀκατάστατον, akatastaton). Externally, the latter reading should be preferred. Internally, however, things get a bit more complex. The notion of being uncontrollable is well suited to the context, especially as a counterbalance to v. 8a, though for this very reason scribes may have been tempted to replace ἀκατάστατον with ἀκατασχετόν. However, in a semantically parallel early Christian text, ἀκατάστατος (akatastato") was considered strong enough of a term to denounce slander as “a restless demon” (Herm. 27:3). On the other hand, ἀκατάστατον may have been substituted for ἀκατασχετόν by way of assimilation to 1:8 (especially since both words were relatively rare, scribes may have replaced the less familiar with one that was already used in this letter). On internal evidence, it is difficult to decide, though ἀκατασχετόν is slightly preferred. However, in light of the strong support for ἀκατάστατον, and the less-than-decisive internal evidence, ἀκατάστατον is preferred instead.