Commentary - Proverbs 13:5

Bird's-eye view

This proverb sets before us a foundational, black-and-white distinction that runs through all of Scripture. It is the great antithesis between the righteous and the wicked, and it locates the battleground squarely in the realm of truth and falsehood. The character of a man is revealed by his relationship to the truth. For the righteous man, this relationship is one of passionate loyalty; he hates what is false. His very nature, having been renewed by the God of truth, recoils from deception. For the wicked man, the relationship is one of utility and eventual ruin. He uses falsehood, dabbles in it, and lives by it, and the end result is that he becomes a stench in the nostrils of God and man, and is ultimately covered in his own shame. The proverb is not just describing two different personality types; it is describing two covenantal realities, two opposing kingdoms, and two ultimate destinies.

The structure is a classic Hebrew parallelism of contrast. The first line establishes the positive attribute of the righteous man through a negative statement: he hates what is evil. The second line describes the wicked man's character by its foul results: he stinks and is humiliated. This is not simply about telling the occasional fib. It is about the fundamental orientation of the heart. One man loves the light and therefore hates the darkness of lies. The other man loves the darkness, and so he inevitably produces that which is odious and shameful, the natural fruit of a life lived against the grain of God's created order.

Outline

Context In Proverbs

The book of Proverbs is relentlessly concerned with the power of the tongue. Words can build up or tear down, bring life or death, heal or destroy. This particular proverb fits within a broad stream of teaching that contrasts the speech of the wise and righteous with the speech of the fool and the wicked. For example, "The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, But the mouth of the wicked what is perverse" (Prov 10:32). And, "Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, But those who deal truthfully are His delight" (Prov 12:22). Proverbs 13:5 sharpens this contrast by moving from God's perspective (what He finds abominable or delightful) to the internal disposition of the man himself. It is not just that God hates lies, but that the man of God has been brought into conformity with his Father's affections and therefore hates lies also. This verse is a character study, revealing that our response to falsehood is a primary diagnostic tool for the state of our soul.

Key Issues

The Odor of Deceit

We live in a time that despises sharp distinctions. Our age wants to blur every line, smudge every category, and pretend that righteousness and wickedness are just matters of perspective. But Scripture will have none of it. Here, the contrast is stark, and it is sensory. The wicked man, because of his traffic in lies, becomes odious. He stinks. The Hebrew word here means to have a foul odor, to be repulsive. This is not a metaphor to be trifled with. Sin, and particularly the sin of falsehood which is the native tongue of the devil, creates a spiritual stench. It pollutes the man from the inside out, and that pollution eventually becomes apparent to everyone around him. He may think his lies are clever, a tool to be managed, but they are more like a spiritual gangrene, rotting his character and making his presence foul. Truth is a sweet savor; lies are the smell of death.

This is why the righteous man has such a visceral reaction. He hates a lying word. This is not mild disapproval. The word for hate here is a strong one, indicating abhorrence and loathing. It is the same hatred God has for sin. The righteous man has been given a new set of spiritual senses. He can smell the rot of a lie, and it turns his stomach. He has come to love the truth because he has come to love the one who is the Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ. His hatred of falsehood is not self-righteous peevishness; it is the holy and healthy reaction of a new nature to that which is bent on destroying everything God has made good.

Verse by Verse Commentary

5a A righteous man hates a lying word,

The proverb begins by defining the righteous man by what he detests. This is crucial. True righteousness is not just a bland, passive goodness. It has sharp edges. It loves what God loves, and it hates what God hates. And God, we are told elsewhere, hates "a lying tongue" (Prov 6:17). So the righteous man is one whose heart has been brought into alignment with God's heart. He doesn't just avoid lying because it is against the rules. He doesn't just find it impolite. He hates it. He loathes it from the gut. Why? Because a "lying word" is the essential tool of the kingdom of darkness. It was a lying word that brought about the fall in the Garden. "You will not surely die." All sin, all rebellion, all destruction is propped up by a scaffolding of lies. The righteous man understands that every lie is an assault on the fabric of reality which is held together by the Word of God, who is the Truth. Therefore, his hatred for lies is a function of his love for God and for the world God has made. To be indifferent to lies is to be indifferent to God.

5b But a wicked man acts odiously and is humiliated.

Now we see the contrast. The wicked man does not hate a lying word; he employs it. And the text describes the result in two ways. First, he "acts odiously." The King James says he "is loathsome." The idea is that his actions make him stink. He becomes a stench. A man who traffics in lies, who builds his life on deception, whose promises are worthless, eventually becomes repulsive. People learn they cannot trust him. His presence becomes foul because it is corrupted by falsehood. He is a walking pollution. He thinks he is being clever, getting ahead, but he is actually just making himself spiritually putrid.

The second result is the inevitable consequence of the first: he "is humiliated." The Hebrew can also be translated "comes to shame." A man who stinks will eventually be shunned. A man whose life is a web of lies will eventually be found out. The lies will unravel. The schemes will collapse. The deceit will be exposed, and what follows is public disgrace. God has built the universe in such a way that wickedness is ultimately self-defeating. The wicked man's attempts to exalt himself through falsehood will be the very means of his downfall. He weaves the rope of his own hanging. The humiliation is not an accident; it is the harvest that grows from the seeds of deceit he so diligently planted.

Application

This proverb forces a very practical self-examination. What is your gut reaction to falsehood? Not just the big, flagrant lies of politicians, but the small, socially acceptable deceptions, the flattering exaggerations, the carefully curated online personas, the fudging on a report, the convenient omission of key facts. Do these things bother you? Do they grieve your spirit? Or have you made a sort of peace with them, seeing them as necessary tools for navigating a fallen world? A hatred for "a lying word" is a mark of a righteous man. If we find that hatred lacking in our hearts, we should not despair, but we should run to the cross. We must ask God to give us a heart that loves truth because it loves Him.

Furthermore, we must recognize that all our righteousness is found in Christ. He is the only one who never countenanced a lying word, whose every word was pure truth. He is the truly righteous man. When we are in Him, His righteousness is counted as ours. But it does not stop there. The Spirit then begins the work of making us practically what we are positionally. He cultivates in us a love for the truth and a hatred for the lie. This proverb provides a benchmark for that process. As we grow in grace, we should find our tolerance for deceit, in ourselves and in others, diminishing rapidly.

And for the one who has been living as the wicked man in this proverb, whose life stinks of deceit and who is perhaps already tasting the bitter fruit of shame, the gospel offers the only true way out. Christ took all our odious sin and shameful humiliation upon Himself on the cross. He became a stench and a disgrace for us, so that we, through faith in Him, could be cleansed and clothed in His honor. The way to stop being odious is to be washed in the blood of the Lamb. The way to escape ultimate humiliation is to humble yourself now and confess the one who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.