Psalms 50:19-20

50:19 You do damage with words, ¹ 

and use your tongue to deceive. ² 

50:20 You plot against your brother; ³ 

you slander your own brother. ⁴ 

Psalms 52:2-4

52:2 Your tongue carries out your destructive plans; ⁵ 

it is as effective as a sharp razor, O deceiver. ⁶ 

52:3 You love evil more than good,

lies more than speaking the truth. ⁷  (Selah)

52:4 You love to use all the words that destroy, ⁸ 

and the tongue that deceives.

Psalms 64:3

64:3 They ⁹  sharpen their tongues like a sword;

they aim their arrow, a slanderous charge, ¹⁰ 

Psalms 120:2-3

120:2 I said, ¹¹  “O Lord, rescue me ¹² 

from those who lie with their lips ¹³ 

and those who deceive with their tongue. ¹⁴ 

120:3 How will he severely punish you,

you deceptive talker? ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 9:3-5

The Lord Laments That He Has No Choice But to Judge Them

9:3 The Lord says, ¹⁶ 

“These people are like soldiers who have readied their bows.

Their tongues are always ready to shoot out lies. ¹⁷ 

They have become powerful in the land,

but they have not done so by honest means. ¹⁸ 

Indeed, they do one evil thing after another ¹⁹ 

and do not pay attention to me. ²⁰ 

9:4 Everyone must be on his guard around his friends.

He must not even trust any of his relatives. ²¹ 

For every one of them will find some way to cheat him. ²² 

And all of his friends will tell lies about him.

9:5 One friend deceives another

and no one tells the truth.

These people have trained themselves ²³  to tell lies.

They do wrong and are unable to repent.

Jeremiah 9:8

9:8 Their tongues are like deadly arrows. ²⁴ 

They are always telling lies. ²⁵ 

Friendly words for their neighbors come from their mouths.

But their minds are thinking up ways to trap them. ²⁶ 

James 3:5-8

3:5 So too the tongue is a small part of the body, ²⁷  yet it has great pretensions. ²⁸  Think ²⁹  how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze. 3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ³⁰  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ³¹  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ³² 

3:7 For every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and sea creature ³³  is subdued and has been subdued by humankind. ³⁴  3:8 But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless ³⁵  evil, full of deadly poison.

[50:19]  ¹ tn Heb “your mouth you send with evil.”

[50:19]  ² tn Heb “and your tongue binds together [i.e., “frames”] deceit.”

[50:20]  ³ tn Heb “you sit, against your brother you speak.” To “sit” and “speak” against someone implies plotting against that person (see Ps 119:23).

[50:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “against the son of your mother you give a fault.”

[52:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “destruction your tongue devises.”

[52:2]  ⁶ 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.

[52:3]  ⁷ tn Or “deceit more than speaking what is right.”

[52:4]  ⁸ 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.

[64:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was started here in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[64:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “a bitter word.”

[120:2]  ¹¹ tn The words “I said” are supplied in the translation for clarification. See the introductory note for this psalm.

[120:2]  ¹² tn Or “my life.”

[120:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “from a lip of falsehood.”

[120:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “from a tongue of deception.”

[120:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “What will he give to you, and what will he add to you, O tongue of deception?” The psalmist addresses his deceptive enemies. The Lord is the understood subject of the verbs “give” and “add.” The second part of the question echoes a standard curse formula, “thus the Lord/God will do … and thus he will add” (see Ruth 1:17; 1 Sam 3:17; 14:44; 20:13; 25:22; 2 Sam 3:9, 35; 19:13; 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Kgs 6:31).

[9:3]  ¹⁶ tn The words “The Lord says” have been moved up from the end of the verse to make clear that a change in speaker has occurred.

[9:3]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “They have readied [or strung] their tongue as their bow for lies.”

[9:3]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “but not through honesty.”

[9:3]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “they go from evil to evil.”

[9:3]  ²⁰ tn Or “do not acknowledge me”; Heb “do not know me.” But “knowing” in Hebrew thought often involves more than intellectual knowledge; it involves emotional and volitional commitment as well. For יָדַע meaning “acknowledge” see 1 Chr 28:9; Isa 29:21; Hos 2:20; Prov 3:6. This word is also found in ancient Near Eastern treaty contexts where it has the idea of a vassal king acknowledging the sovereignty of a greater king (cf. H. Huffmon, “The Treaty Background of Hebrew yada,” BASOR 181 [1966]: 31-37).

[9:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “Be on your guard…Do not trust.” The verbs are second masculine plural of direct address and there seems no way to translate literally and not give the mistaken impression that Jeremiah is being addressed. This is another example of the tendency in Hebrew style to turn from description to direct address (a figure of speech called apostrophe).

[9:4]  ²² tn Heb “cheating, each of them will cheat.”

[9:5]  ²³ tn Heb “their tongues.” However, this is probably not a natural idiom in contemporary English and the tongue may stand as a part for the whole anyway.

[9:8]  ²⁴ tc This reading follows the Masoretic consonants (the Kethib, a Qal active participle from שָׁחַט, shakhat). The Masoretes preferred to read “a sharpened arrow” (the Qere, a Qal passive participle from the same root or a homonym, meaning “hammered, beaten”). See HALOT 1354 s.v. II שָׁחַט for discussion. The exact meaning of the word makes little difference to the meaning of the metaphor itself.

[9:8]  ²⁵ tn Heb “They speak deceit.”

[9:8]  ²⁶ tn Heb “With his mouth a person speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets an ambush for him.”

[3:5]  ²⁷ tn Grk “a small member.”

[3:5]  ²⁸ tn Grk “boasts of great things.”

[3:5]  ²⁹ tn Grk “Behold.”

[3:6]  ³⁰ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

[3:6]  ³¹ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[3:6]  ³² 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]  ³³ tn Grk (plurals), “every kind of animals and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures.”

[3:7]  ³⁴ tn Grk “the human species.”

[3:8]  ³⁵ 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.