Railing
Railing is the UPDV's word for harsh, insolent, vituperative speech — reviling, using harsh, insolent, or vituperative language, scoffing. The vocabulary itself is concrete: a railing judgment, a reviler, railings as one of the disputants' yields. The instances are bunched at three sites — Nabal at Carmel, Shimei at Bahurim, and the passers-by at the cross — and the New Testament forbids the act in five places (1 Cor 5:11, 1 Tim 6:4, 1 Pet 3:9, 2 Pet 2:11, Jude 1:9). Around that core the surrounding texts supply a thicker context: the mocker as a settled type, the blasphemer/curser as a tongue-class enemy of God and neighbor, and the Sirach 28 doctrine of the destructive tongue itself.
The UPDV Vocabulary of Railing
The verb appears at three instances, and each one names a different theatre. At Carmel, Nabal answers David's young men with it: "Look, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master; and he railed at them" (1 Sam 25:14). At Bahurim, the same act takes the form of a curse hurled at a passing king: "And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Begone, begone, you man of blood, and base fellow" (2 Sam 16:7). At the cross, it is the gesture of crowd-mockery: "And those who passed by railed on him, wagging their heads, and saying, Ha! You who destroys the temple, and builds it in three days" (Mark 15:29). The shared pattern is reviling speech directed at a person who cannot — at that moment — answer in kind.
The Pauline catalogues then push the vocabulary into vice-list territory. Among the company a brother is told to refuse is "any man who is named a brother if he is a whore, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; do not even eat with such a one" (1 Cor 5:11). The Pastoral Epistles list "railings" alongside envy, strife, and evil surmisings as the yield of a puffed-up man "doting about questionings and disputes of words" (1 Tim 6:4). And the apostolic ethic for the railed-against is uniform with the Sermon on the Mount: "not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but on the contrary blessing; for hereunto were you⁺ called, that you⁺ should inherit a blessing" (1 Pet 3:9).
The Angelic Restraint
Two of the "forbidden" texts plant the prohibition by appeal to angelic conduct. Jude makes the case from one named episode: "But Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, did not dare bring against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you" (Jude 1:9). 2 Peter generalizes the same datum: "whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring a railing judgment against them before the Lord" (2 Pet 2:11). The argument is comparative: a creature far stronger than the human reviler refuses the railing register even against the devil, and rests judgment on the Lord. The implied verdict — that human railing is the act of a weaker party arrogating to itself a register higher beings will not assume — is left intact.
Railing as Mockery
Mocking registers the same act under the gloss "scoffing" included in the headline. The Chronicler reads the fall of Jerusalem as a single sentence about it: "but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of Yahweh arose against his people, until there was no remedy" (2 Chr 36:16). A few generations earlier the same chronicler shows it at the Passover summons: "the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even to Zebulun: but they laughed them to scorn, and mocked them" (2 Chr 30:10). At the wall the post-exilic counterpart hears it again: "when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews" (Neh 4:1). The Beth-el road preserves the juvenile form — "there came forth young lads out of the city, and mocked him, and said to him, Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead" (2 Kgs 2:23) — and Hebrews names mocking among the trial-items the faithful bore: "and others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, moreover of bonds and imprisonment" (Heb 11:36).
The Psalter places the same gestures around the Sufferer, and the gesture-vocabulary is identical to what the cross-narrative uses for railing: "All those who see me laugh me to scorn: They shoot out the lip, they shake the head" (Ps 22:7). Isaiah brings the gesture into prophetic indictment: "Against whom do you⁺ sport yourselves? Against whom do you⁺ make a wide mouth, and put out the tongue? Are you⁺ not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood" (Is 57:4). The wisdom verdict on the act is concise: "Whoever mocks the poor reproaches his Maker; [And] he who is glad at calamity will not be unpunished" (Prov 17:5); and "The eye that mocks at his father, And despises to obey his mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out" (Prov 30:17).
Sirach amplifies this register inside the wisdom voice. The sage forbids it where mockery would be cruelty: "Do not mock at one who wears [only] a loincloth; And do not scorn at a bitter day" (Sir 11:4); reads it as the proud man's native output, with vengeance built in: "Mockery and reproach [come] from the proud, And vengeance, like a lion, lies in wait for them" (Sir 27:28); and traces it as the rich exploiter's terminal gesture toward the man he has stripped: "And then he will see you and be furious with you; And he will wag his head at you" (Sir 13:7). The fool is identified by the same act applied to wisdom itself: "If a foolish man hears it, he mocks it, And he casts it behind his back" (Sir 21:15). For the fuller mocking-as-type catalogue, see Mocking.
Railing as Cursing and Reviling
The Bahurim narrative blurs the line between railing and cursing, and the curse-vocabulary carries the rest of that overlap. Shimei's full speech is given in the longer form: "look, there came out from there a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gera; he came out, and cursed still as he came. And he cast stones at David, and at all the slaves of King David: ... And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Begone, begone, you man of blood, and base fellow: Yahweh has returned on you all the blood of the house of Saul" (2 Sam 16:5-8). Goliath earlier supplies the prototype against the warrior of Yahweh: "the Philistine cursed David by his gods" (1 Sam 17:43). Sennacherib's emissaries supply it against Yahweh himself: "his slaves spoke yet more against Yahweh God, and against his slave Hezekiah" (2 Chr 32:16); the Sirach poem on the kings adds the verdict: "In his days Sennacherib came up, And sent Rabshakeh, ... And blasphemed God in his pride" (Sir 48:18). The Maccabean record names the same registers — "he saw the blasphemies that were done in Judah, and in Jerusalem" (1 Macc 2:6); "remember their blasphemies, and do not give them a dwelling place" (1 Macc 7:38) — and recalls the Sennacherib precedent as the case-law: "O Lord, when those who were sent by King Sennacherib blasphemed you, an angel went out, and slew of them a hundred and eighty-five thousand" (1 Macc 7:41). The same act on Nicanor's lips the narrator catalogues in three terms: "But he mocked and despised them, and abused them: and he spoke proudly" (1 Macc 7:34).
The cross-narratives keep the Bahurim register in the air. At the trial: "And many other things they spoke against him, reviling him" (Lk 22:65). The Markan double-charge mirrors it: "because they said, He has an unclean spirit" (Mark 3:30). James reads the act as belonging to the wider blasphemy-class and indicts it from inside the church: "Don't they blaspheme the honorable name by which you⁺ are called?" (Jas 2:7); "With it we bless the Lord and Father; and with it we curse men, who are made after the likeness of God: ... out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so" (Jas 3:9-10). The Pauline rule for the railed-against — already given in 1 Peter — is repeated as a positive: "Bless those who persecute you⁺; bless, and do not curse" (Rom 12:14); and Luke states it in the Master's own mouth: "bless those who curse you⁺, pray for those who despitefully use you⁺" (Lk 6:28). The wisdom voice frames its own warning: "Don't revile the king, no, not in your thought; and don't revile the rich in your bedchamber: for a bird of the heavens will carry the voice" (Eccl 10:20). And Sirach hands the act its own self-reflexive verdict: "When the ungodly curses his adversary He curses his own soul" (Sir 21:27). For the wider doctrine of cursing, profanity, and the divine name, see Blasphemy.
The Tongue That Rails
Sirach's poem on the tongue gives railing its anatomy. The sage's image of the third tongue — the slanderous, abusive speaker who passes between two — is the most extended single piece of speech-ethics on the page: "Curse the whisperer and the double-tongued, For he has destroyed many who were at peace" (Sir 28:13). The poem then escalates. "The third tongue has shaken many, And has dispersed them from nation to nation; Even strong cities it has destroyed, And overturned the houses of the great" (Sir 28:14); "The third tongue has cast out brave women, And deprived them of their labors" (Sir 28:15). The instrument is then weighed against the body's weapons: "The stroke of a whip makes a mark, But the stroke of a tongue breaks bones" (Sir 28:17); "Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, But not so many as have fallen by the tongue" (Sir 28:18). Its bondage-register is iron and brass: "For its yoke is a yoke of iron, And its bands are bands of brass" (Sir 28:20). Its end is graded above Hades: "The death of it is an evil death, And Hades is more profitable than it" (Sir 28:21). The countermeasure is structural: "See that you hedge your possession about with thorns; And for your mouth make a door and a bar" (Sir 28:24).
The same poem casts railing as a fall-mode for the speaker himself. "A slip on the pavement is better than [a slip] of the tongue" (Sir 20:18). "Glory and shame are in the hand of one who speaks rashly; And the tongue of a man is his fall" (Sir 5:13). The remedy is set in the man's own request: "O that one would set a watch over my mouth, And a seal of shrewdness upon my lips, That I do not fall by means of them, And that my tongue does not destroy me" (Sir 22:27). The discipline-of-the-mouth pair is given as parental address: "Hear, my children, [concerning] the discipline of the mouth, He who keeps [it] will not be ensnared; But the sinner is ensnared by his lips, And the fool stumbles through his mouth" (Sir 23:7-8). Sirach's prohibition matches the New Testament reviler-list: "Do not accustom your mouth to vulgar speech, For there is a sinful thing in that" (Sir 23:13); "A man who is accustomed to disgraceful talk Will not learn wisdom all his days" (Sir 23:15). The prudential corollary is given on the social side: "Do not fight with a man of tongue; And you will not put wood on a fire" (Sir 8:3). The Psalter and Romans supply the indictment-form: "His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression: Under his tongue is mischief and iniquity" (Ps 10:7); "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness" (Rom 3:14). For the fuller speech-ethics treatment, see Tongue and the cognate Slander.
Railing Forbidden
The "forbidden" line gathers what the article has already paid out. The reviler is one of the six classes a Christian is told not to keep table with (1 Cor 5:11). Railings are itemized as a yield of word-disputatious religion (1 Tim 6:4). The Petrine ethic for the railed-against — "not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but on the contrary blessing" (1 Pet 3:9) — turns the act into the site at which inheriting a blessing is contracted. And the two angelic-restraint texts (Jude 1:9, 2 Pet 2:11) hand the prohibition its argument from the higher creature. The wisdom-voice echo runs in the same direction: "Bless those who persecute you⁺; bless, and do not curse" (Rom 12:14). The disciple is therefore registered, in the UPDV's own wording, as one who has been called away from the reviler-class and toward the blessing-register that 1 Peter 3 binds to the inheritance.