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Proverbs 13:2 · World English Bible

Proverbs 13:2 Meaning By the Fruit of His Lips

By the fruit of his lips, a man enjoys good things, but the unfaithful crave violence.

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What does Proverbs 13:2 mean?

Thought feeds on whatever it produces. A mind that speaks from love is nourished by its own words, for what it offers others returns to it as peace.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 13:2 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Thought feeds on whatever it produces. A mind that speaks from love is nourished by its own words, for what it offers others returns to it as peace. But a mind that trades in attack lives on the very thing it sends out, and swallows the harm it believed it aimed elsewhere. Nothing crosses to another; the whole exchange happens within the one who speaks.

What a mind puts forth is what it takes in. Choose the gentle word and be fed by it.

Mouth: the mind's power to send thought outward, whose offering returns to feed the one who made it. Fruit: the harvest of what a mind has chosen to speak, sweet or bitter according to the teacher it followed.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 13:2 today

  1. Before you post or send the sharp thing you drafted, read it back and ask whether you want to live inside that sentence for the rest of the day. Then decide.
  2. Say one real, specific kind thing to someone today, out loud or in a text. Watch how much of it lands back in you.
  3. In the group chat where everyone is piling on, be the one line that is not a jab. You do not have to defend the person, just decline to feed it.

If my words are my food, what have I been eating lately?

The same truth in other traditions

Dhammapada

Speak a harsh word and it comes back to you. What you send out circles home, like dust thrown into the wind.

Tao Te Ching 81

True words are not showy. The gentle speaker takes nothing from anyone and ends the day with more, not less.

Sufism · Rumi

The tongue is a doorway. Whatever you let through it furnishes the room you are living in.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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