Proverbs 25:18

25:18 Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow, ¹ 

so is the one who testifies against ²  his neighbor as a false witness. ³ 

Psalms 52:2

52:2 Your tongue carries out your destructive plans; ⁴ 

it is as effective as a sharp razor, O deceiver. ⁵ 

Psalms 57:4

57:4 I am surrounded by lions;

I lie down ⁶  among those who want to devour me; ⁷ 

men whose teeth are spears and arrows,

whose tongues are a sharp sword. ⁸ 

Psalms 59:7

59:7 Look, they hurl insults at me

and openly threaten to kill me, ⁹ 

for they say, ¹⁰ 

“Who hears?”

Psalms 64:3

64:3 They ¹¹  sharpen their tongues like a sword;

they aim their arrow, a slanderous charge, ¹² 

James 3:6-8

3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ¹³  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ¹⁴  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ¹⁵ 

3:7 For every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and sea creature ¹⁶  is subdued and has been subdued by humankind. ¹⁷  3:8 But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless ¹⁸  evil, full of deadly poison.

[25:18]  ¹ sn The first line identifies the emblem of the proverb: False witnesses are here compared to deadly weapons because they can cause the death of innocent people (e.g., Exod 20:16; Deut 5:20; and Prov 14:5).

[25:18]  ² tn The verb עָנָה (’anah) followed by the preposition בְּ (bet) with its object means “to testify against” (answer against someone). With the preposition לְ (lamed) it would mean “to testify for” someone. Here the false witness is an adversary, hence the comparison with deadly weapons.

[25:18]  ³ tn While עֵד (’ed) could be interpreted as “evidence” (a meaning that came from a metonymy – what the witness gives in court), its normal meaning is “witness.” Here it would function as an adverbial accusative, specifying how he would answer in court.

[52:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “destruction your tongue devises.”

[52:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “like a sharpened razor, doer of deceit.” The masculine participle עָשָׂה (’asah) is understood as a substantival vocative, addressed to the powerful man.

[57:4]  ⁶ tn The cohortative form אֶשְׁכְּבָה (’eshkÿvah, “I lie down”) is problematic, for it does not seem to carry one of the normal functions of the cohortative (resolve or request). One possibility is that the form here is a “pseudo-cohortative” used here in a gnomic sense (IBHS 576-77 §34.5.3b).

[57:4]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew verb לָהַט (lahat) is here understood as a hapax legomenon meaning “devour” (see HALOT 521 s.v. II להט), a homonym of the more common verb meaning “to burn.” A more traditional interpretation takes the verb from this latter root and translates, “those who are aflame” (see BDB 529 s.v.; cf. NASB “those who breathe forth fire”).

[57:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “my life, in the midst of lions, I lie down, devouring ones, sons of mankind, their teeth a spear and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword.” The syntax of the verse is difficult. Another option is to take “my life” with the preceding verse. For this to make sense, one must add a verb, perhaps “and may he deliver” (cf. the LXX), before the phrase. One might then translate, “May God send his loyal love and faithfulness and deliver my life.” If one does take “my life” with v. 4, then the parallelism of v. 5 is altered and one might translate: “in the midst of lions I lie down, [among] men who want to devour me, whose teeth….”

[59:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “look, they gush forth with their mouth, swords [are] in their lips.”

[59:7]  ¹⁰ tn The words “for they say” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The following question (“Who hears?”) is spoken by the psalmist’s enemies, who are confident that no one else can hear their threats against the psalmist. They are aggressive because they feel the psalmist is vulnerable and has no one to help him.

[64:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was started here in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[64:3]  ¹² tn Heb “a bitter word.”

[3:6]  ¹³ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

[3:6]  ¹⁴ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[3:6]  ¹⁵ 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).

[3:7]  ¹⁶ tn Grk (plurals), “every kind of animals and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures.”

[3:7]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “the human species.”

[3:8]  ¹⁸ 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.