Commentary - Proverbs 10:18

Bird's-eye view

This proverb, like many in this section of Solomon's collection, is a crisp, two-part parallelism that dissects the diseased relationship between the heart, the mouth, and the reputation. The verse presents two portraits of wickedness, showing how sin in the heart inevitably manifests itself in corrupt speech. The first man is a hypocrite who conceals his malice with smooth words, while the second is a fool who broadcasts malice, whether his own or someone else's. Both are dealing in the same basic currency of hatred and falsehood, but they employ different strategies. One is a covert operator, the other an overt fool. Together, they illustrate the biblical truth that what is down in the well of the heart will eventually come up in the bucket of the mouth. The verse is a stark warning against both the hidden poison of feigned friendship and the overt poison of slander.

At its core, the proverb is about the failure to love. Hatred is the motivating force in the first clause, and the spreading of a bad report is the antithesis of the love that covers a multitude of sins. The man with lying lips and the fool who slanders are two sides of the same counterfeit coin. One pretends to be a friend while hating you, and the other destroys friendships by broadcasting evil reports. Both are agents of division and strife, and both stand in stark contrast to the righteous man whose words are like choice silver and whose desire is to build up, not tear down.

Outline

Context In Proverbs

Proverbs 10 marks a shift in the book from the longer, didactic poems of chapters 1-9 to the short, pithy, two-clause proverbs that characterize much of the rest of the book. This verse sits within a series of couplets that contrast the righteous and the wicked, the wise and the foolish, often focusing on the power of speech. Just a few verses earlier, we are told that "hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins" (Prov 10:12). Verse 18 is a specific application of that principle. The man who covers hatred with lying lips is the opposite of the man whose love covers sins. He covers his own sin of hatred, not the sin of another in love. The fool who spreads a bad report is the one who actively stirs up strife. The surrounding verses deal with the mouth of the righteous as a fountain of life (v. 11), the tongue of the just as choice silver (v. 20), and the lips of the righteous feeding many (v. 21). This verse, then, provides the dark contrast, showing how the mouth of the wicked is a tool for destruction.

Key Issues

Two Kinds of Verbal Poison

This proverb gives us two distinct but related pathologies of speech. Both are rooted in a heart that is out of sorts with God, but they manifest themselves differently. The first is the sin of the smiling assassin, the man who can look you in the eye and speak pleasantly while his heart is a viper's nest of malice. This is the sin of Absalom, who kissed his father while plotting to steal his throne. It is the sin of Judas, who betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss. This is a sophisticated, calculating wickedness.

The second pathology is less subtle. It is the sin of the town gossip, the talebearer, the fool who cannot keep his mouth shut. He has heard a juicy morsel about someone, a "bad report," and he simply must share it. He does not have the wisdom or the character to weigh the truth of the report, the motivation for spreading it, or the damage it will cause. He is a fool, a kesil in Hebrew, which describes a dull, thick, obstinate person. His slander is not necessarily calculated in the same way as the hypocrite's deception; it is more like a wrecking ball swung by an idiot. But the damage is just as real. Both men are traffickers in verbal poison, and this proverb puts them both in the dock.

Verse by Verse Commentary

18a He who covers up hatred has lying lips...

The first character we meet is the man who hides his hatred. The verb for "covers up" here is not the same one used for love covering sins. This is not the gracious covering of another's transgression out of love. This is the deceitful concealment of one's own festering malice. The heart is full of hatred, but the man does not want this to be known, and so he uses his lips to construct a facade. His lips lie. They lie when they speak words of friendship. They lie when they offer compliments. They lie when they agree to your face. They are instruments of a grand deception, a tool to keep the victim off-balance while the hatred in the heart continues to plot and simmer.

As the Lord Jesus taught, the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. But the hypocrite tries to defy this principle. He attempts to disconnect his mouth from his heart, to make his speech an independent agent of deception. But the lie is not just in the false words he speaks; his entire presentation is a lie. His smile is a lie. His handshake is a lie. Proverbs elsewhere warns about such a man: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful" (Prov 27:6). This man deals exclusively in deceitful kisses. He is a walking contradiction, a man whose outward pleasantness is a thin crust over a volcano of ill will.

18b And he who spreads a bad report is a fool.

The second character is the fool who "spreads a bad report." The Hebrew for "bad report" is dibbah, which means slander, defamation, or an evil report. This is the person who brings you the latest dirt on someone else. And the Bible's assessment of him is blunt: he is a fool. Why is he a fool? First, because he is likely trafficking in lies or half-truths. Slander is rarely meticulously fact-checked. Second, even if the report has a kernel of truth, the fool lacks the wisdom to know what to do with it. Wisdom might take the report to the person involved, or to a pastor, or it might simply cover the matter in love and let it die. But the fool's only impulse is to broadcast it. He loves the feeling of being "in the know," of having insider information. He enjoys the momentary power that comes from tearing someone else down.

He is a fool because he does not understand consequences. He does not see that his words are like firebrands that destroy reputations, friendships, and churches. "A talebearer reveals secrets, but he who is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter" (Prov 11:13). This man has no faithfulness of spirit. His mouth is an open sewer. He is the opposite of the wise man who keeps his mouth shut and avoids strife. The fool, in his blundering way, does the devil's work for him. The devil is the "accuser of the brethren," and the slandering fool is his eager, unpaid intern.

Application

This proverb forces us to look in two directions. First, we must look inward, at our own hearts and mouths. Are there people against whom we harbor a secret hatred or resentment, all while maintaining a veneer of civility? We must confess this as the sin it is. It is a lie. We must either deal with the hatred through repentance and forgiveness, or we must be honest about the breach. To let it fester while our lips play the part of a friend is to become the man this proverb condemns. We must pray for God to align our hearts and our lips, so that our speech is an honest reflection of a heart that is learning to love.

Second, we must examine our role as hearers and speakers of "reports." When we hear a negative story about someone, what is our first impulse? Is it to share it with someone else, under the guise of a "prayer request" or "seeking counsel?" If so, we are on the path of the fool. Wisdom demands that we shut our mouths. Most evil reports should die with the person who hears them. If action is required, it is the action of private confrontation as Jesus lays out in Matthew 18, not the action of public broadcast. We must cultivate a deep suspicion of dibbah, the bad report. We should starve it of the oxygen of our attention and refuse to give it the platform of our mouths.

Ultimately, the only cure for both the lying hypocrite and the slandering fool is the gospel. The gospel tells us that God did not cover His hatred for our sin with lying lips. He poured out His just and holy hatred for sin upon His own Son. And Christ did not spread a bad report about us, though He knew every sordid detail. Instead, He covered our multitude of sins with His own blood. He is the ultimate faithful friend, the one whose heart and lips are in perfect accord, and whose words are always life. To be delivered from the sins of this proverb is to become more like Him.