Proverbs 24:2 · World English Bible
Proverbs 24:2 Meaning For Their Hearts Plot Violence
for their hearts plot violence and their lips talk about mischief.
What does Proverbs 24:2 mean?
A mind given over to fear rehearses harm as though it were wisdom, turning the whole of its attention to how one thing may be brought down and another undone. This is the ego at its work, a thought that studies attack because attack is the only language separation knows, and what it dwells upon within it soon speaks aloud.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 24:2 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A mind given over to fear rehearses harm as though it were wisdom, turning the whole of its attention to how one thing may be brought down and another undone. This is the ego at its work, a thought that studies attack because attack is the only language separation knows, and what it dwells upon within it soon speaks aloud. The inner rehearsal and the outward word are one movement, guilt looking for a place to land.
What such a mind labors over is not power but its own imprisonment, for every plan of injury is a plan against itself. The correction is to change what the mind studies, letting a gentler teacher fill the attention that fear had wholly claimed.
Heart: the mind's inner attention, here bent wholly toward planning harm as if injury were the only knowledge worth keeping Lips: the outward speech through which the mind's rehearsed attack finds its voice, the guilt within seeking a place to land
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Live Proverbs 24:2 today
- If you are driving or showering while drafting a cutting reply to someone in your head, catch it and let the script drop. You are not planning, you are practicing.
- When a friend starts in on someone who is not in the room, change the subject instead of adding your piece. One turn is usually all it takes.
- Before sending a message written while angry, read it back and ask whether you want to be the kind of person who sends that. Then wait an hour.
What have I been rehearsing in my head that I would be ashamed to say out loud?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · the Dhammapada
We become what we think about. A mind that rehearses harm is building the house it will have to live in.
Stoicism · Epictetus
He said to guard your impressions, because what you keep turning over in your head will eventually run your life. The rehearsal is already the choice.
Judaism · the sages
Speech that tears someone down is said to harm three people: the one who says it, the one who hears it, and the one spoken of. The damage starts before the words leave.
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