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Psalms 59:12 · World English Bible

Psalms 59:12 Meaning For the Sin of Their Mouth

For the sin of their mouth, and the words of their lips, let them be caught in their pride, for the curses and lies which they utter.

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What does Psalms 59:12 mean?

People are caught by the very speech they thought was free. Cursing and lying are not passing noises; they are acts that build a structure around the one who utters them, and pride seals him inside it.

From the Clinical Psychology reading below.

Psalms 59:12 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Clinical Psychology

People are caught by the very speech they thought was free. Cursing and lying are not passing noises; they are acts that build a structure around the one who utters them, and pride seals him inside it. The mouth commits a person more thoroughly than he knows, and the trap he ends up in is one his own words assembled.

Speech has consequences that outrun the speaker. Every deceit narrows the world it is told into, until the liar can no longer find his way through a landscape he has falsified. The tongue writes the sentence that the man then has to serve.

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Clinical Psychology lens

Live Psalms 59:12 today

  1. Before you send the message you have already typed twice, read it back and ask whether it is actually true, or just satisfying. If it is the second one, delete it and write the smaller, truer version.
  2. When someone asks you a direct question today and the easy answer would be a slight shading of the facts, say the plain thing instead, even if it takes an awkward extra sentence to explain.
  3. In the meeting or the argument where you feel the pull to overstate your case, hold the line at what you can actually back up. You will have to live inside whatever you claim there for weeks.

Which small thing have you said lately that you are now quietly working to keep standing up?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism · Dhammapada

Speech is action, not air, and what is spoken in anger or falsehood follows the speaker like the cart wheel following the ox that pulls it.

Stoicism · Epictetus

Be silent for the most part, or say only what is needed and in few words. The mouth is where most people lose the ground they stand on.

Judaism · Talmud

The rabbis said slander kills three: the one who speaks it, the one who hears it, and the one spoken about. The speaker is listed first, and not by accident.

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