I’ve grouped together these verses from chapter 14 because they focus on words and how we talk.
Proverbs 14.3
“By the mouth of a fool comes a rod for his back, but the lips of the wise will preserve them.”
Foolish people speak impulsively. They lack discipline; they do not pause and think before they speak. As result, their reckless words get them into trouble. Wise people, on the other hand, are disciplined and careful about what they say. They think before they speak, which keeps them out of trouble.
The book of Proverbs addresses the topic of wise words vs foolish words multiple times, and will do so again in verses yet to come. It is a priority discipline in scripture, and human history bears witness as to why.
There are many stories in history of people who used words in a high-impact way to encourage or challenge or hold accountable or motivate and inspire. There are also many stories in history of people who used words to do great harm through toxic gossip or deceitful lies or belittling insults or reckless comments.
Modern culture even has a term for it: “verbal abuse.”
Just yesterday I read about a 13-year old girl who committed suicide because she was bullied by other students in her school. Kids said awful things about her at school as well as on-line. The reckless, belittling words of her classmates pieced her heart and wounded her so deeply that she took her own life.
Words can help, or they can hurt. Words can give life, or they can spread poison. When people are foolish and reckless with their words, bad things happen.
Proverbs 14.5
“A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies.”
The truthfulness of someone’s words is critical. You can trust faithful people because they tell you the truth. You cannot trust foolish people because they lie and seek to deceive you.
We desperately need truth-tellers in our world. Everything in our society (work, home, education, government, journalism, ministry) requires faithful people who speak truth and hear truth. And wherever there are false witnesses and lies, great damage is done to relationships and organizations and society.
Be a truth-teller.
Proverbs 14.6-7
“A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding. Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.”
Scoffers love their own thoughts, and they operate from an attitude of arrogance. They resent being told they are wrong, and their arrogance about their opinions makes them worse than a fool (see Proverbs 26:12). Scoffers do not and will not seek the insight of wise people; they think they already know it all (see Proverbs 15:12).
Scoffers look for knowledge, but they look in the wrong places, in the wrong way, and for the wrong reasons. Because of that arrogance, they don’t find true knowledge; they find pseudo-knowledge. Ironically, this only serves to amplify the ego and conceit of scoffers, and they foolishly declare as “fact” things that sound good, but in reality are misleading and deceitful.
Twitter and other social media platforms are awash with scoffers … people who arrogantly assert fraudulent truth claims, foolish sound-bites, and outright lies.
Wise people recognize the emptiness and futility of engaging with scoffers and therefore ignore them. This includes, by the way, scoffers on social media. Do not respond to them! As this Proverb says, “Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.”
