The Poison Under the Tongue Text: Psalm 10:7
Introduction: The Anatomy of a Rotten Mouth
The book of Psalms is the anatomy of all the parts of the soul, as Calvin famously said. It is also an anatomy of the world we live in. It does not flinch from the hard realities, and one of those realities is the existence and operation of genuinely wicked men. Our modern sensibilities, soaked as they are in a sentimental therapeutic soup, want to psychologize all wickedness away. Men are not wicked, we are told; they are merely misunderstood, or victims of their environment, or suffering from low self esteem. But the Bible is far more realistic. The Bible believes in bad guys.
Psalm 10 gives us a detailed portrait of one such man. He is not just a fellow who makes mistakes. He is a predator. He is arrogant, persecutes the poor, and boasts of his evil desires. And at the center of his character, the engine room of his wicked enterprise, is his mouth. The Apostle Paul, wanting to paint a picture of total human depravity in Romans 3, reaches back into the Old Testament for his palette, and he includes this very verse. "Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness" (Romans 3:13-14). He is quoting from Psalm 5, Psalm 140, and right here from Psalm 10. In other words, to understand the universal sinfulness of man, you must first understand the particular speech of the wicked man.
Our words are not just vibrations in the air. They are the overflow of the heart. Jesus told us that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34). So when we come to a verse like this, which dissects the speech of the ungodly, we are not just looking at a list of verbal taboos. We are getting a look under the hood. We are seeing the very nature of a heart set against God. This is a spiritual MRI. And what it reveals is a soul full of curses, lies, and violence, all bubbling up into speech.
The Text
His mouth is full of curses and deceit and oppression;
Under his tongue is mischief and wickedness.
(Psalm 10:7 LSB)
A Mouth Full of Hell (v. 7a)
We begin with the first clause, which describes the public output of the wicked man's heart.
"His mouth is full of curses and deceit and oppression;" (Psalm 10:7a)
Notice the word "full." This is not an occasional slip of the tongue. This is not a man who is having a bad day and lets a foul word fly. This is a man whose entire verbal life is saturated with this poison. His mouth is at capacity with it. It is the defining characteristic of his communication. There are three ingredients in this toxic stew: curses, deceit, and oppression.
First, curses. The Hebrew word here refers to an oath, often a false oath, or a general imprecation. It is speech that wishes ill upon others and invokes a higher power to bring it about. This is the language of rebellion. The man who curses is attempting to play God, to call down judgments that are not his to give. He is using his words to tear down, to harm, to bring ruin. This is the opposite of the Christian's calling, which is to bless and not curse (Romans 12:14). The wicked man's mouth is a fire, as James says, a world of iniquity set on fire by hell itself (James 3:6).
Second, deceit. This is the native tongue of the serpent. Deceit is not just telling a bald faced lie; it is the crafty use of words to mislead, to trap, to create a false reality for the advantage of the speaker. The wicked man in this psalm is a hunter, and deceit is his primary weapon. He uses lies to lure the helpless into his net (v. 9). This is central to what it means to be ungodly. God is a God of truth. His Word is truth. To be a man of deceit is to be fundamentally at war with the nature of God and the fabric of His reality. It is to build your life on a foundation of unreality, which is the height of folly.
Third, oppression. This word carries the idea of fraud, of using power and position to crush those who are weaker. His words are not just empty threats; they are instruments of violence. He uses his speech to extort, to intimidate, and to injure. Think of the playground bully who uses insults to dominate, or the corrupt official who uses legal jargon to steal from the poor, or the abusive husband who uses verbal attacks to control his wife. This is not sticks and stones; this is a verbal clubbing. The wicked man knows that words can be weapons, and he has a full arsenal.
The Secret Stash (v. 7b)
The second half of the verse takes us from what is publicly displayed in his mouth to what is privately savored under his tongue.
"Under his tongue is mischief and wickedness." (Psalm 10:7b)
This is a fascinating and telling image. What is "under his tongue"? It is like a man savoring a piece of hard candy, rolling it around, enjoying its flavor in private before he chews it up. This is not what he says, but what he is thinking of saying. This is the sin before the sin. It is the malicious thought, the wicked scheme, the perverse fantasy that he cherishes and cultivates in the secret place of his heart.
The word for "mischief" here often means trouble or sorrow, the kind of trouble you make for other people. The word for "wickedness" is iniquity or sin in its active form. So, under his tongue, he is tasting the trouble he is about to cause. He is delighting in the prospect of sin. He is not just a man who falls into temptation; he is a connoisseur of it. He enjoys the planning and plotting of evil. He gets a kick out of it.
This reveals the deep seated nature of his corruption. He does not sin reluctantly. He sins with relish. He loves the taste of it. This is why repentance is impossible for such a man apart from a supernatural work of God. You cannot reason a man out of something he was never reasoned into. His condition is not an intellectual problem; it is a problem of his appetites. He loves the darkness. He finds wickedness to be delicious.
This is a profound diagnostic tool for our own hearts. What do we savor? What thoughts do we entertain and roll around under our tongues when no one is looking? Do we cherish a grievance? Do we replay a lustful fantasy? Do we savor the thought of someone else's misfortune? The things we hide under the tongue are a truer indication of our spiritual state than the things that come flying out of the mouth in a moment of passion. This is where the real battle is fought.
Conclusion: A New Vocabulary
This portrait of the wicked man's speech is grim, and as Paul tells us in Romans, it is a portrait of all of us apart from Christ. Our hearts are just as capable of producing this poison. By nature, our throats are open graves, and we savor the taste of mischief.
But the good news of the gospel is that God performs a miraculous heart transplant, and with it, a tongue transplant. He takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). And when the heart is changed, the mouth follows.
The gospel does not just give us a list of "bad words" to avoid. It gives us an entirely new vocabulary, a new way of speaking that flows from a new nature. Instead of curses, we have blessings. "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (Ephesians 4:29). Instead of deceit, we have truth. "Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor" (Ephesians 4:25). Instead of oppression, we have encouragement and comfort.
And what do we savor under our tongues now? What do we cherish in the secret place of our hearts? The psalmist tells us elsewhere: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103). The Christian is one who has learned to hate the taste of wickedness and to delight in the taste of God's truth. He meditates on God's law day and night. That is what he rolls under his tongue.
So let us examine our speech. Let us examine what we say when we are squeezed. But more than that, let us examine what we savor in the quiet moments. For it is there, under the tongue, that we find the true flavor of our hearts. And if we find the bitter taste of mischief and wickedness there, let us run to the cross, where Christ drank the full cup of God's curse against our cursed speech, so that our mouths might be filled, not with poison, but with the high praises of our God.