Two Faces of Folly Text: Proverbs 10:18
Introduction: The War in Our Words
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It does not float in the ethereal realm of abstract theology; it comes down into the dust and grime of our daily lives, and particularly, into our mouths. Our modern world is drowning in words. We are bombarded by an endless torrent of opinions, hot takes, accusations, and flatteries from our televisions, our phones, and our neighbors. But our secular culture has no coherent standard for how to govern this flood. It simultaneously champions radical, brutal honesty, so long as it tears down traditional moralities, and at the same time demands the use of flattering, dishonest pronouns to prop up its new ones. It is a world of managed lies and weaponized gossip. In short, it is a world of fools.
Into this verbal chaos, the Word of God speaks with piercing clarity. God is not silent on the ethics of speech. He is the God of the Logos, the Word, and He created the world through speech. It follows, then, that He is intensely interested in how His image-bearers, creatures made to speak, use their tongues. The tongue is not an autonomous agent. As James tells us, it is a fire, a world of iniquity, set on fire by hell. But it is also, when redeemed, an instrument of life. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21).
This proverb from Solomon presents us with two sides of the same foolish coin. It addresses two distinct but related sins of the mouth: the sin of dishonest concealment and the sin of malicious broadcasting. One man hides the hatred in his heart behind a mask of pleasantries, while the other broadcasts every slanderous thought that flits through his mind. The world might call the first man polite and the second man a boor, but God calls them both fools. They are two different expressions of a heart that is not right with God, a heart that has rejected the wisdom that begins with fearing Him.
We must see this proverb not as a helpful hint for better communication, but as a diagnostic tool for the heart. Jesus taught us that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). What comes out of the mouth is an overflow of what is sloshing around inside. This proverb, then, is not just about our words. It is about the hatred, deceit, and folly that produce those words. And it shows us two ways that folly manifests itself in our relationships: the lie of the covered-up feud and the foolishness of the broadcasted slander.
The Text
He who covers up hatred has lying lips,
And he who spreads a bad report is a fool.
(Proverbs 10:18 LSB)
The Treachery of Hidden Hatred
We begin with the first clause:
"He who covers up hatred has lying lips..." (Proverbs 10:18a)
This is the sin of the passive-aggressive. This is the man who smiles to your face and plots your demise in his heart. He is the colleague who compliments your work and then quietly undermines you with the boss. He is the church member who greets you warmly on Sunday morning while nursing a bitter grudge all week long. His lips say one thing, "Peace, brother," but his heart says another, "I despise you." This man's lips are not just inaccurate; they are lying. They are instruments of falsehood because they are projecting a reality that does not exist. They are creating a fraudulent peace.
The law of God is clear on this. "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him" (Leviticus 19:17). Notice the connection. The antidote to hidden hatred is not a fake smile; it is frank, honest, and direct confrontation. God commands us to deal with our grievances. He does not give us the option to bury them under a thin layer of social nicety. To do so is to allow bitterness to take root, and that root, the author of Hebrews tells us, will spring up and defile many (Hebrews 12:15).
This kind of deception is particularly corrosive within the covenant community. The church is to be a place of honest confession, open rebuke, and genuine forgiveness. When we cover up hatred, we are injecting poison into the body of Christ. We are choosing the way of Cain, who spoke cordially to his brother Abel in the field before rising up to kill him. We are acting like Joab, who took Amasa by the beard to kiss him and then ran him through with a sword. It is a profound treachery.
The man with lying lips thinks he is being clever. He thinks he is managing the situation, keeping the peace, avoiding awkwardness. But God says he is simply a liar. He has exchanged the difficult path of honest reconciliation for the easy path of deceit. His peace is a sham. His lips are constructing a world of falsehood, and in the economy of God, all such structures are built on sand and will eventually come crashing down.
The Folly of Broadcast Slander
The second half of the proverb gives us the other side of the coin, the man who sins in the opposite direction.
"...And he who spreads a bad report is a fool." (Proverbs 10:18b LSB)
If the first man is a covert operative, this man is a town crier of filth. The Hebrew for "bad report" is dibbah, which means slander, defamation, or an evil report. This is the gossip, the talebearer, the man who cannot wait to share the latest juicy morsel of negative information about someone else. He is the one who forwards the accusatory email, who loves to talk "out of concern" about another's failings, who populates the comments section with innuendo and accusation.
And what is God's diagnosis of this man? He is a fool. The word here is kesil, which refers to a dull, thick, obstinate kind of fool. This is not a matter of intellectual horsepower. A man can have a high IQ and still be a kesil fool. His foolishness lies in his moral and spiritual calculus. He does not understand how the world God made actually works.
Why is he a fool? First, he is a fool because he destroys unity. "A whisperer separates the best of friends" (Proverbs 16:28). He takes a firebrand from the devil's hearth and goes about setting relationships ablaze. He thinks he is gaining influence or importance by being the one "in the know," but he is actually just a social arsonist. He is a wrecker.
Second, he is a fool because he brings trouble on himself. "Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles" (Proverbs 21:23). The slanderer inevitably gets found out. His words circle back on him. The trouble he sought to stir up for others lands squarely on his own head. He throws mud, thinking it will only stick to his target, and is always surprised to find himself covered in it.
Third, and most importantly, he is a fool because he is fighting against God. Slander is the native tongue of Satan, the diabolos, the accuser of the brethren. When a man spreads a bad report, he is doing the devil's work for him, free of charge. He has enlisted in the enemy's army and is firing on his own lines. This is the very definition of folly.
Notice the contrast. The first man covers up his own hatred. The second man uncovers someone else's alleged sin. Both are expressions of a heart at war with God's design for community. One creates a false peace through lies, the other destroys true peace through slander. Both are fools.
The Gospel Remedy
So we have two portraits of foolishness: the hypocrite and the gossip. One hides the truth about himself, and the other spreads lies about others. What is the solution? The solution is not found in simply trying harder to be a better communicator. The problem is not in the lips, but in the heart from which the lips speak. The problem is sin, and the only remedy for sin is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Consider how Christ addresses both of these follies. To the man hiding hatred with lying lips, the gospel says that all things are naked and exposed before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:13). You cannot hide your hatred from God. He sees the heart. The only way to deal with that hatred is to bring it into the open, not before men in order to slander, but before God in repentance. Christ died so that our real sins, including our real hatreds, could be confessed and forgiven. Grace does not require us to pretend we are not sinners. It requires us to admit that we are, and to receive a cleansing we could never earn.
To the man spreading a bad report, the gospel points to the Great Slandered One. Jesus Christ endured the ultimate bad report. He was called a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners, a blasphemer, a demoniac. False witnesses rose up against Him. He was the victim of the most vicious slander campaign in human history, and it ended with His crucifixion. And yet, He did not revile in return. He opened not His mouth. Why? Because He was bearing our sins of the tongue on that cross. He took the penalty for every slander we have ever uttered, every malicious word, every foolish report.
The cross, therefore, is the end of both hypocrisy and slander. It exposes our pretense, forcing us to be honest about the hatred in our hearts. And it silences our slander, because we see what our own sins of the tongue did to the Son of God. In Christ, we are given a new heart, and out of that new heart can come a new kind of speech. Paul tells us to let no corrupting talk come out of our 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).
This is the goal. Not just the absence of lying and slandering, but the presence of speech that builds up, that fits, that gives grace. This is the speech of a wise man, a man made wise by the foolishness of the cross. This is the transformation that God offers to every hypocrite and every gossip who will turn from his folly and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. He takes liars and fools and makes them into truth-tellers and sages, all for His glory.