The Meteorology of Malice Text: Proverbs 25:23
Introduction: The Inescapable Law of Sowing and Reaping
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied physics. It is not a collection of quaint, inspirational sayings for your grandmother's needlepoint. It is a divine instruction manual on how the world actually works. God has built certain cause-and-effect relationships into the very fabric of the cosmos, and this is true not only in the material realm of gravity and thermodynamics, but also in the moral and relational realm. If you sow to the flesh, you will of the flesh reap corruption. If you sow to the Spirit, you will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. This is not a threat; it is a description of the universe. It is like the law of gravity. You can deny it, you can resent it, but if you step off a ten-story building, you will have a very sudden and compelling educational experience.
Our text today is one of these laws of spiritual physics. It describes an observable, predictable, and inescapable connection between a particular kind of speech and its social consequences. We live in an age that is drunk on words. We are drowning in a sea of tweets, posts, comments, and whispers. And because we are so inundated, we have become careless. We treat our words as though they were weightless, disposable things. But God tells us that our words have mass. They have consequence. They create weather patterns in the lives of those around us.
Specifically, this proverb addresses the kind of secretive, back-channel communication that Christians are so often tempted by. We call it venting, or sharing a concern, or just processing. The Bible has a much sharper name for it: a tongue of secrets, a backbiting tongue. And it tells us that this kind of talk produces a very specific and predictable atmospheric disturbance. It brings a storm, and that storm shows up on the face of the person who hears it.
We must understand that our fight for a Christian culture is, at its root, a fight for a culture of truth. A society rots from the inside out when it despises the truth, and that despising of truth begins not in the halls of government, but in the quiet conversations between two people in the church foyer. This proverb is not just about being nice. It is about the fundamental structure of a healthy community. It is about cause and effect, sin and judgment, and the righteous use of indignation.
The Text
The north wind brings forth rain,
And a tongue of secrets, an indignant face.
(Proverbs 25:23 LSB)
An Unavoidable Forecast (v. 23a)
We begin with the first half of the couplet, the meteorological observation:
"The north wind brings forth rain..." (Proverbs 25:23a)
Now, some of your translations might read differently here. The King James, for example, says the north wind "driveth away rain." This has caused some commentators to scratch their heads. Is Solomon a bad weatherman? No, the issue is one of geography and translation. In the land of Israel, a wind from the north or northwest, coming off the Mediterranean, would indeed bring rain. The proverb is simply stating an observable fact of nature, a predictable pattern. When the people in that region saw the clouds gathering in that particular way, they knew what was coming. It was as certain as the sunrise.
This is the foundation of the parallel. The proverb establishes a natural law to illustrate a spiritual one. The connection is one of certainty. Just as surely as this wind brings this weather, so this sin brings this reaction. God is teaching us to be astute observers of the world He made. He wants us to see the patterns. He wants us to connect the dots. The world is not a random collection of disconnected events. It is a cosmos, an ordered reality, and the moral order is just as real as the physical order.
The secularist wants to live in a world of cause and effect when it comes to science, but he wants to live in a world of pure chance and personal autonomy when it comes to morality. He wants to be able to sow thistle seeds and reap a harvest of figs. He wants to speak like the devil and have everyone treat him like an angel. But God says no. The universe does not work that way. Actions have consequences. Words have consequences. And the consequences of slanderous words are as predictable as rain from a storm cloud.
The Sin of Secret Slander (v. 23b)
The second half of the verse presents the moral equivalent of that storm front.
"...And a tongue of secrets, an indignant face." (Proverbs 25:23b LSB)
What is a "tongue of secrets"? The Hebrew refers to speech that is hidden, clandestine, done in secret. Other translations render it as a "backbiting tongue" or a "slandering tongue." This is not open rebuke. This is not a public charge that can be answered. This is the cowardly sin of the whisperer, the gossip who poisons a reputation behind someone's back. It is the sin of dropping hints, of sharing "prayer requests" that are really just juicy bits of slander, of passing on a bad report under the guise of concern.
This sin is particularly heinous because it is a sin of cowards. The slanderer does not have the courage to confront his brother to his face, as Scripture commands (Matthew 18:15). Instead, he engages in a guerrilla war of insinuation. He lobs verbal grenades from the cover of darkness. The Bible consistently condemns this. "A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends" (Proverbs 16:28). It is the work of a fool to slander (Proverbs 10:18), and it is the work of the devil, who is the great Accuser of the brethren.
Notice the kind of society this creates. It is a society of suspicion. When the tongue of secrets is tolerated, no one can trust anyone. Every conversation might be a prelude to betrayal. It dissolves the bonds of fellowship and replaces them with fear. This is why it is so corrosive to the life of a church. A church is a body, and gossip is an autoimmune disease, where the body attacks itself.
And God says this kind of talk has a predictable, observable result. It produces "an indignant face."
The Righteousness of Indignation
Now we come to the reaction. The tongue of secrets produces an indignant face. And the key question we must ask is, whose face is it?
It is the face of the person who is listening to the slander. This proverb is not simply saying that gossip makes people angry in general. It is a piece of practical wisdom for how to stop it. The proverb is teaching that the proper, godly, righteous response to hearing a backbiting tongue is an angry face. It is a rebuke.
We have been taught by a sentimental, effeminate brand of Christianity that all anger is sinful. We are told that being nice is the highest virtue. But the Bible does not teach this. There is a universe of difference between sinful, selfish rage and righteous indignation. God Himself gets angry at sin, and we are commanded to be imitators of God. "Be angry, and do not sin," Paul says (Ephesians 4:26). A man who cannot get angry at evil is a man who does not love good.
So when someone comes to you with a "tongue of secrets," with a juicy piece of gossip about your brother, the loving thing to do is not to smile and nod. It is not to say, "Oh, let's pray for him." The loving thing to do, for the slanderer, for the person being slandered, and for the health of the whole church, is to show them an indignant face. Your face should communicate, "Why are you telling me this? Have you spoken to him about it? Do you not know that you are sinning with your mouth right now?"
An angry countenance, in this context, is a grace. It is a non-verbal rebuke that drives away the sin of slander just as the wind drives the clouds. It creates an environment where gossip cannot thrive. Gossips are like cockroaches; they love the dark. They thrive on quiet assent and complicit smiles. When you turn on the light of righteous anger, they scatter. You are doing the slanderer a favor. You are helping him to mortify his sin. You are refusing to be a partaker in his evil deeds (2 John 1:11).
If slander and gossip are running rampant in a church, it is not primarily the fault of those who start the rumors. It is the fault of all the "nice" Christians who listen to them. They are providing a market for the foul goods being sold. If every time a gossip started to whisper, he was met with a firm, indignant face, the market would dry up overnight. The rain would stop.
Conclusion: Becoming a Clear Sky Christian
This proverb, then, is intensely practical. It gives us a divine strategy for maintaining the health of our community. The world believes that secrets and back-channel communications are the source of power. This is how politics and corporate ladder-climbing work. But the kingdom of God is built on truth, openness, and direct confrontation when necessary.
So let me ask you. What kind of weather do you bring? When you show up, do conversations become cleaner, more honest, more honoring to Christ? Or does your presence create a low-pressure system where slander and complaint can fester?
And what kind of weather do you tolerate? When someone brings you a slanderous report, do you provide a welcoming environment for that storm? Or are you a north wind? Does your very countenance drive it away? Do people know that you are a dead-end for gossip? Do they know that if they bring you a slanderous report, they will be met with a righteous and loving anger that calls them to repentance?
We are called to be a people of the light. Our speech is to be seasoned with salt, giving grace to those who hear. This means we must be ruthless with the tongue of secrets. We must refuse to listen to it, and we must rebuke it when we hear it. When we do, we are not being unkind. We are being faithful. We are acting as agents of God's own created order, where sin is confronted, truth is defended, and the fellowship of the saints is kept pure. Just as a north wind brings the rain, so a backbiting tongue brings an indignant face. And that indignation, when it is righteous, is the very thing that will bring back the clear sky.