Psalms 52:2-3

52:2 Your tongue carries out your destructive plans; ¹ 

it is as effective as a sharp razor, O deceiver. ² 

52:3 You love evil more than good,

lies more than speaking the truth. ³  (Selah)

Psalms 57:4

57:4 I am surrounded by lions;

I lie down ⁴  among those who want to devour me; ⁵ 

men whose teeth are spears and arrows,

whose tongues are a sharp sword. ⁶ 

Psalms 59:7

59:7 Look, they hurl insults at me

and openly threaten to kill me, ⁷ 

for they say, ⁸ 

“Who hears?”

Psalms 64:3-4

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

they aim their arrow, a slanderous charge, ¹⁰ 

64:4 in order to shoot down the innocent ¹¹  in secluded places.

They shoot at him suddenly and are unafraid of retaliation. ¹² 

Proverbs 12:18

12:18 Speaking recklessly ¹³  is like the thrusts of a sword,

but the words ¹⁴  of the wise bring ¹⁵  healing. ¹⁶ 

Isaiah 59:3-5

59:3 For your hands are stained with blood

and your fingers with sin;

your lips speak lies,

your tongue utters malicious words.

59:4 No one is concerned about justice; ¹⁷ 

no one sets forth his case truthfully.

They depend on false words ¹⁸  and tell lies;

they conceive of oppression ¹⁹ 

and give birth to sin.

59:5 They hatch the eggs of a poisonous snake

and spin a spider’s web.

Whoever eats their eggs will die,

a poisonous snake is hatched. ²⁰ 

Isaiah 59:13

59:13 We have rebelled and tried to deceive the Lord;

we turned back from following our God.

We stir up ²¹  oppression and rebellion;

we tell lies we concocted in our minds. ²² 

Jeremiah 9:3

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

9:3 The Lord says, ²³ 

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

Their tongues are always ready to shoot out lies. ²⁴ 

They have become powerful in the land,

but they have not done so by honest means. ²⁵ 

Indeed, they do one evil thing after another ²⁶ 

and do not pay attention to me. ²⁷ 

Jeremiah 9:5

9:5 One friend deceives another

and no one tells the truth.

These people have trained themselves ²⁸  to tell lies.

They do wrong and are unable to repent.

James 3:6-8

3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ²⁹  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ³⁰  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ³¹ 

3:7 For every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and sea creature ³²  is subdued and has been subdued by humankind. ³³  3:8 But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless ³⁴  evil, full of deadly poison.

[52:2]  ¹ tn Heb “destruction your tongue devises.”

[52:2]  ² 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]  ³ tn Or “deceit more than speaking what is right.”

[57:4]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ tn Heb “look, they gush forth with their mouth, swords [are] in their lips.”

[59:7]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was started here in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[64:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “a bitter word.”

[64:4]  ¹¹ tn The psalmist uses the singular because he is referring to himself here as representative of a larger group.

[64:4]  ¹² tn Heb “and are unafraid.” The words “of retaliation” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[12:18]  ¹³ tn The term בּוֹטֶה (boteh) means “to speak rashly [or, thoughtlessly]” (e.g., Lev 5:4; Num 30:7).

[12:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the tongue” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV). The term לָשׁוֹן (lashon, “tongue”) functions as a metonymy of cause for what is said.

[12:18]  ¹⁵ tn The term “brings” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

[12:18]  ¹⁶ sn Healing is a metonymy of effect. Healing words are the opposite of the cutting, irresponsible words. What the wise say is faithful and true, gentle and kind, uplifting and encouraging; so their words bring healing.

[59:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “no one pleads with justice.”

[59:4]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “nothing”; NAB “emptiness.”

[59:4]  ¹⁹ tn Or “trouble” (NIV), or “harm.”

[59:5]  ²⁰ tn Heb “that which is pressed in hatches [as] a snake.”

[59:13]  ²¹ tn Heb “speaking.” A new sentence was started here in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[59:13]  ²² tn Heb “conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.”

[9:3]  ²³ 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]  ²⁴ tn Heb “They have readied [or strung] their tongue as their bow for lies.”

[9:3]  ²⁵ tn Heb “but not through honesty.”

[9:3]  ²⁶ tn Heb “they go from evil to evil.”

[9:3]  ²⁷ 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).

[9:5]  ²⁸ 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.

[3:6]  ²⁹ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

[3:6]  ³⁰ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[3:6]  ³¹ 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]  ³² tn Grk (plurals), “every kind of animals and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures.”

[3:7]  ³³ tn Grk “the human species.”

[3:8]  ³⁴ 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.