The Fruitful Tree and the Excised Tongue Text: Proverbs 10:31
Introduction: The War of Words
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is not a collection of abstract platitudes for needlepoint pillows. It is a training manual for a godly life, given to a young man, a son, who is about to navigate a world filled with traps, temptations, and a great deal of foolish talk. And at the heart of this practical wisdom is a recurring diagnosis of the human condition that begins with the mouth. The tongue, as James tells us, is a fire, a world of iniquity. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. And because this is true, God's wisdom must necessarily address it head on.
We live in an age drowning in words. We are bombarded by podcasts, social media feeds, 24-hour news cycles, and endless commentary. Our entire civilization is shaped, and frequently deformed, by the words that men speak and write. But we have forgotten that words are not neutral. They are not inert little data packets. Words are covenantal. They build or they destroy. They bring life or they bring death. Every word you speak is an act of allegiance. You are either building for the kingdom of God or you are building for the kingdom of darkness. There is no middle ground, no neutral territory. The war of worldviews is a war of words.
And so, in this sharp, antithetical proverb, Solomon sets before us the great divide. It is the fundamental distinction that runs through all of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. It is the difference between the righteous and the wicked, the wise and the foolish, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And he shows us how this internal spiritual reality manifests itself externally, audibly, through the mouth. What is in the well of the heart inevitably comes up in the bucket of the mouth. This proverb gives us two portraits: the man whose speech is like a fruitful tree, and the man whose speech is a cancerous growth, destined for the knife.
The Text
The mouth of the righteous bears wisdom,
But the tongue of perversions will be cut out.
(Proverbs 10:31 LSB)
The Righteous Mouth: A Harvest of Wisdom
We begin with the first clause:
"The mouth of the righteous bears wisdom..." (Proverbs 10:31a)
The imagery here is agricultural. The word for "bears" is the same word used for a tree bringing forth fruit. This is not a sterile, mechanical process. The righteous man's mouth is not a 3D printer spitting out pre-programmed wise statements. It is an organic outflow of the life within him. His speech is a harvest, and the seed of that harvest is a righteous heart.
First, who are the righteous? In the ultimate sense, there is none righteous, no, not one. A righteous man, in the biblical sense, is not a man who has achieved sinless perfection. He is a man who has been declared righteous by faith. He is oriented correctly toward God. He fears the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. Because his heart has been set right with God, the fruit that grows from that root will be sound. As Jesus says, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. The speech of the righteous man is wise because it flows from a heart that has been made wise by the fear of God.
And what is this wisdom that he bears? Biblical wisdom is not about having a high IQ or a collection of clever sayings. It is the skill of godly living. It is knowing the right thing to do, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. It is applied theology. Therefore, the speech of a righteous man is constructive. It builds up. It brings clarity to confusion. It applies the balm of the gospel to a wound. It speaks truth into a situation saturated with lies. It is timely, like apples of gold in settings of silver. It is life-giving, a fountain of life, as Proverbs says elsewhere.
This is the positive vision for our speech. Your words are meant to be a source of nourishment for others. When you speak, are you planting seeds of wisdom, truth, and grace? Or are you sowing discord, confusion, and folly? The righteous man's speech is a reflection of the creative Word of God, the Logos who spoke and brought order out of chaos. In our small, creaturely way, our words are to do the same, bringing godly order to the lives of those around us.
The Perverse Tongue: A Covenantal Cancer
The second clause presents the stark antithesis, the other side of the covenantal coin.
"But the tongue of perversions will be cut out." (Proverbs 10:31b LSB)
Notice the shift from "mouth" to "tongue." The tongue is the specific instrument of speech, and here it is characterized by "perversions." The Hebrew word means twisted, crooked, distorted. A perverse tongue is one that takes what is straight and makes it crooked. It takes truth and twists it into a lie. It takes what is good and mocks it. It takes what is beautiful and defiles it. This is the native language of the serpent in the garden. He did not flatly deny God's command at first; he twisted it. "Did God really say...?"
The perverse tongue is the primary tool of the wicked. It is the source of slander, gossip, flattery, deceit, blasphemy, and filthiness. It is speech that is fundamentally at war with the created order. It seeks to undo God's distinctions, to call evil good and good evil, to put darkness for light and light for darkness. It is the speech of rebellion, and its root is a heart that hates God and His law.
And what is the fate of such a tongue? The language is severe, surgical, and final: it "will be cut out." This is the language of judgment. In the Old Testament law, certain offenses resulted in being "cut off" from the people. Here, the instrument of the offense is itself targeted for excision. A doctor does not reason with a cancerous tumor; he cuts it out before it destroys the whole body. In the same way, God will not tolerate the cancerous speech of the wicked indefinitely. There will come a day of reckoning.
This is a covenantal promise of destruction. If you use your tongue to twist reality and rebel against the Creator, the Creator will ultimately silence that tongue. This judgment can take many forms in this life. A liar's reputation is eventually destroyed. A slanderer finds himself isolated. A mocker is paid back in his own coin. But the ultimate fulfillment of this is found in the final judgment, when every idle word will be accounted for, and those who persisted in their rebellion will be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. The perverse tongue, which refused to praise God in time, will be silenced for eternity.
The Gospel Application: From Excision to Regeneration
This proverb presents a terrifying dilemma, because if we are honest, we all have a perverse tongue. Who here has not twisted the truth for personal gain? Who has not slandered another? Who has not spoken foolishly or wickedly? As James says, if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man. By the standard of this proverb, we all stand under the sentence of judgment. Our tongues all deserve to be cut out.
But this is where the glory of the gospel crashes in. The central problem is not the tongue itself, but the sinful heart from which it operates. You cannot fix a perverse tongue with good intentions, or by biting it every time you want to say something wicked. You cannot simply staple good fruit onto a bad tree. The tree itself must be made good.
The gospel is not a program for tongue-management. The gospel is a declaration that God has performed a heart transplant. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God takes our twisted, rebellious, stony hearts and gives us new hearts of flesh. He puts His Spirit within us. The Lord Jesus took the covenant curse that we deserved. On the cross, He was silenced. He was "cut off" from the land of the living, bearing the judgment for all our perverse speech.
And because He was cut off for us, our tongues do not have to be. Instead of excision, we receive regeneration. The Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation now comes to dwell in us, bringing order to the chaos of our hearts. And as He sanctifies us, He begins to sanctify our speech. The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, begins to flavor our words.
Therefore, the application for the believer is not to live in fear of the knife, but to live in the grace of the cross. It is to recognize that your mouth belongs to Christ, bought with His blood. It is to yield your tongue daily as an instrument of righteousness. It is to fill your heart with the wisdom of Scripture, so that what flows out will be the fruit of wisdom. And when you fail, as you will, it is to run immediately to the throne of grace, confess your sin, and receive the cleansing that Christ has already secured for you. He is the one who makes the crooked straight, and that includes our crooked tongues.