Romans 3:4

3:4 Absolutely not! Let God be proven true, and every human being ¹  shown up as a liar, ²  just as it is written: “so that you will be justified ³  in your words and will prevail when you are judged.” ⁴ 

Psalms 5:9

5:9 For ⁵  they do not speak the truth; ⁶ 

their stomachs are like the place of destruction, ⁷ 

their throats like an open grave, ⁸ 

their tongues like a steep slope leading into it. ⁹ 

Psalms 12:3-4

12:3 May the Lord cut off ¹⁰  all flattering lips,

and the tongue that boasts! ¹¹ 

12:4 They say, ¹²  “We speak persuasively; ¹³ 

we know how to flatter and boast. ¹⁴ 

Who is our master?” ¹⁵ 

Psalms 36:3

36:3 The words he speaks are sinful and deceitful;

he does not care about doing what is wise and right. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 52:2

52:2 Your tongue carries out your destructive plans; ¹⁷ 

it is as effective as a sharp razor, O deceiver. ¹⁸ 

Psalms 57:4

57:4 I am surrounded by lions;

I lie down ¹⁹  among those who want to devour me; ²⁰ 

men whose teeth are spears and arrows,

whose tongues are a sharp sword. ²¹ 

Isaiah 59:3

59:3 For your hands are stained with blood

and your fingers with sin;

your lips speak lies,

your tongue utters malicious words.

Jeremiah 9:3-5

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

9:3 The Lord says, ²² 

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

Their tongues are always ready to shoot out lies. ²³ 

They have become powerful in the land,

but they have not done so by honest means. ²⁴ 

Indeed, they do one evil thing after another ²⁵ 

and do not pay attention to me. ²⁶ 

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

He must not even trust any of his relatives. ²⁷ 

For every one of them will find some way to cheat him. ²⁸ 

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 ²⁹  to tell lies.

They do wrong and are unable to repent.

Ezekiel 13:7

13:7 Have you not seen a false vision and announced a lying omen when you say, “the Lord declares,” although I myself never spoke?

Matthew 12:34-35

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 ³⁰  brings good things out of his ³¹  good treasury, ³²  and the evil person brings evil things out of his evil treasury.

James 3:5-8

3:5 So too the tongue is a small part of the body, ³³  yet it has great pretensions. ³⁴  Think ³⁵  how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze. 3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ³⁶  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ³⁷  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ³⁸ 

3:7 For every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and sea creature ³⁹  is subdued and has been subdued by humankind. ⁴⁰  3:8 But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless ⁴¹  evil, full of deadly poison.

[3:4]  ¹ tn Grk “every man”; but ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo") is used in a generic sense here to stress humanity rather than masculinity.

[3:4]  ² tn Grk “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” The words “proven” and “shown up” are supplied in the translation to clarify the meaning.

[3:4]  ³ tn Grk “might be justified,” a subjunctive verb, but in this type of clause it carries the same sense as the future indicative verb in the latter part. “Will” is more idiomatic in contemporary English.

[3:4]  ⁴ tn Or “prevail when you judge.” A quotation from Ps 51:4.

[5:9]  ⁵ tn Or “certainly.”

[5:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “for there is not in his mouth truthfulness.” The singular pronoun (“his”) probably refers back to the “man of bloodshed and deceit” mentioned in v. 6. The singular is collective or representative, as the plural in the next line indicates, and so has been translated “they.”

[5:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “their inward part[s] [is] destruction.” For a discussion of the extended metaphor in v. 9b, see the note on the word “it” at the end of the verse.

[5:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “their throat is an open grave.” For a discussion of the extended metaphor in v. 9b, see the note on the word “it” at the end of the verse. The metaphor is suggested by the physical resemblance of the human throat to a deeply dug grave; both are dark chasms.

[5:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “they make smooth their tongue.” Flattering, deceitful words are in view. See Ps 12:2. The psalmist’s deceitful enemies are compared to the realm of death/Sheol in v. 9b. Sheol was envisioned as a dark region within the earth, the entrance to which was the grave with its steep slopes (cf. Ps 88:4-6). The enemies’ victims are pictured here as slipping down a steep slope (the enemies’ tongues) and falling into an open grave (their throat) that terminates in destruction in the inner recesses of Sheol (their stomach). The enemies’ קרב (“inward part”) refers here to their thoughts and motives, which are destructive in their intent. The throat is where these destructive thoughts are transformed into words, and their tongue is what they use to speak the deceitful words that lead their innocent victims to their demise.

[12:3]  ¹⁰ tn The verb form is a jussive, indicating that the statement is imprecatory (“May the Lord cut off”), not indicative (“The Lord will cut off”; see also Ps 109:15 and Mal 2:12). The psalmist appeals to God to destroy the wicked, rather than simply stating his confidence that he will. In this way he seeks to activate divine judgment by appealing to God’s just character. For an example of the power of such a curse, see Judg 9:7-57.

[12:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “a tongue speaking great [things].”

[12:4]  ¹² tn Heb “which say.” The plural verb after the relative pronoun indicates a plural antecedent for the pronoun, probably “lips” in v. 3.

[12:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “to our tongue we make strong.” The Hiphil of גָבַר (gavar) occurs only here and in Dan 9:27, where it refers to making strong, or confirming, a covenant. Here in Ps 12 the evildoers “make their tongue strong” in the sense that they use their tongue to produce flattering and arrogant words to accomplish their purposes. The preposition -לְ (l) prefixed to “our tongue” may be dittographic.

[12:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “our lips [are] with us.” This odd expression probably means, “our lips are in our power,” in the sense that they say what they want, whether it be flattery or boasting. For other cases where אֵת (’et, “with”) has the sense “in the power of,” see Ps 38:10 and other texts listed by BDB 86 s.v. 3.a.

[12:4]  ¹⁵ sn The rhetorical question expresses the arrogant attitude of these people. As far as they are concerned, they are answerable to no one for how they speak.

[36:3]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “he ceases to exhibit wisdom to do good.” The Hiphil forms are exhibitive, indicating the outward expression of an inner attitude.

[52:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “destruction your tongue devises.”

[52:2]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ 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]  ²¹ 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….”

[9:3]  ²² 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]  ²³ tn Heb “They have readied [or strung] their tongue as their bow for lies.”

[9:3]  ²⁴ tn Heb “but not through honesty.”

[9:3]  ²⁵ tn Heb “they go from evil to evil.”

[9:3]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ 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]  ²⁸ tn Heb “cheating, each of them will cheat.”

[9:5]  ²⁹ 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.

[12:35]  ³⁰ tn The Greek text reads here ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpos). The term is generic referring to any person.

[12:35]  ³¹ tn Grk “the”; the Greek article has been translated here and in the following clause (“his evil treasury”) as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[12:35]  ³² 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).

[3:5]  ³³ tn Grk “a small member.”

[3:5]  ³⁴ tn Grk “boasts of great things.”

[3:5]  ³⁵ tn Grk “Behold.”

[3:6]  ³⁶ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

[3:6]  ³⁷ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[3:6]  ³⁸ 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]  ³⁹ tn Grk (plurals), “every kind of animals and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures.”

[3:7]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “the human species.”

[3:8]  ⁴¹ 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.