Psalms 52:4

52:4 You love to use all the words that destroy, ¹ 

and the tongue that deceives.

Luke 18:4

18:4 For ²  a while he refused, but later on ³  he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor have regard for people, ⁴ 

James 3:6

3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ⁵  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ⁶  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ⁷ 

¹ tn Heb “you love all the words of swallowing.” Traditionally בַּלַּע (bala’) has been taken to mean “swallowing” in the sense of “devouring” or “destructive” (see BDB 118 s.v. בָּלַע). HALOT 135 s.v. III *בֶּלַע proposes a homonym here, meaning “confusion.” This would fit the immediate context nicely and provide a close parallel to the following line, which refers to deceptive words.

² tn Grk “And for.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

³ tn Grk “after these things.”

⁴ tn Grk “man,” but the singular ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo") is used as a generic in comparison to God.

⁵ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

⁶ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

⁷ 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).