Slander
The UPDV treats slander as a class of speech crime that runs through the law, the Psalter, the wisdom tradition, the prophets, the gospel narratives of Jesus' trial, and the apostolic letters. The vocabulary is wide — false witness, defaming, backbiting, talebearing, whispering, evil-speaking, railing, reviling, slander proper — and the diagnosis is consistent: the slandering tongue is sharp as a serpent's, it is venomous as adders' poison, it scorches like a fire, it breaks bones, it sheds blood, it separates friends, it is the devil's own work as the accuser of the brothers. The remedy is also consistent: refuse to be a talebearer, refuse to be a witness without cause, bridle the tongue, refrain the lips from speaking guile, lay aside evil-speaking, repay reviling with blessing, give no occasion to those who speak against you, and trust Yahweh to put the lying mouth to silence.
The Source in the Heart
The UPDV roots slander in what the heart already is. Jesus puts it as a general law of the mouth: "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good; and the evil [man] out of the evil [treasure] brings forth that which is evil: for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45). What comes out has the same character as what is inside, so slander is diagnosed as something the heart manufactures, not something the tongue invents on its own. James reads the tongue accordingly: "the tongue is a fire: the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defiles the whole body" (Jas 3:6). The Psalmist registers it as the wicked person's whole inward state: "For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; Their inward part is much wickedness; Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have used deceit" (Ps 5:9); "His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression: Under his tongue is mischief and iniquity" (Ps 10:7); "The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: He has ceased to be wise [and] to do good" (Ps 36:3). And the wicked man positively enjoys it: "You love all devouring words, O you deceitful tongue" (Ps 52:4).
Idleness is named in the apostolic letters as a soil in which slander grows. The widows' problem at Ephesus is described as exactly this: "they learn also [to be] idle, going about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not" (1 Tim 5:13).
Forbidden by the Law
Israel's law treats false speech against a fellow man as a covenant offense. The Decalogue states it as the ninth word: "You will not bear false witness against your fellow man" (Ex 20:16). The Covenant Code restates it: "You will not take up a false report: don't put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness" (Ex 23:1). The Holiness Code prohibits the active circulation of speech against a neighbor: "You will not go up and down as a talebearer among your relatives: you will not stand against the blood of your fellow man" (Lev 19:16). And Deuteronomy provides the standing remedy when a witness is shown to be lying — the perjurer receives the punishment he intended for the man he accused: "If an unrighteous witness rises up against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, then both the men, between whom the controversy is, will stand before Yahweh, before the priests and the judges that will be in those days; and the judges will make diligent inquisition: and see if the witness is a false witness, and has testified falsely against his brother; then you⁺ will do to him, as he had thought to do to his brother: so you will put away the evil from the midst of you" (Deut 19:16-19).
Paul reads the Decalogue's neighbor-clauses as still binding on the Christian conscience: "this, You will not commit adultery, You will not kill, You will not steal, You will not covet, and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, namely, You will love your fellow man as yourself" (Rom 13:9).
False Witness in Court
The wisdom tradition returns repeatedly to the lying mouth in court because the law's protections fail when the testimony is corrupt. Proverbs places false witness in Yahweh's catalog of seven things hated: "A false witness who utters lies, And he who sows discord among brothers" (Prov 6:19). It contrasts the two kinds of mouth at the bar: "He who utters truth shows forth righteousness; But a false witness, deceit" (Prov 12:17). It warns the perjurer that the case will not stay closed: "A false witness will not be unpunished; And he who utters lies will perish" (Prov 19:9). It forbids volunteering accusation: "Don't be a witness against your fellow man without cause; And do not deceive with your lips" (Prov 24:28). And it names the false witness as a weapon in his own right: "A man who bears false witness against his fellow man Is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow" (Prov 25:18). Sirach gathers the same fear into a list of three terrors plus a fourth: "Of three things my heart is afraid, And concerning a fourth I am in great fear" — slander in the city is among them (Sir 26:5). The Psalmist prays from inside the experience of being prosecuted by liars: "Unrighteous witnesses rise up; They ask me of things that I don't know" (Ps 35:11).
The Tongue's Damage
Where the law and the courtroom address slander as transgression, the wisdom tradition and the Psalter address it as injury. The damage is consistently described in physical and predatory imagery. Job names the tongue as a scourge from which Yahweh must hide his servants: "You will be hid from the scourge of the tongue; Neither will you be afraid of destruction when it comes" (Job 5:21). The Psalmist gives it serpent-imagery: "They have sharpened their tongue like a serpent; Adders' poison is under their lips. Selah" (Ps 140:3). Ecclesiastes uses the same picture for the man whose tongue is uncontrolled: "If the serpent bites before it is charmed, then is there no advantage to the master of the tongue" (Eccl 10:11). The Preacher reads slander as madness running in a closed circuit: "The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness; and the end of his mouth is mischievous madness" (Eccl 10:13).
Sirach gathers the wisdom-tradition's full picture in one sustained meditation. The slanderer is the whisperer who turns good to evil and sets a trap for the friend: "The whisperer will turn good to evil; And he will set a conspiracy for your pleasant things" (Sir 11:31); he defiles himself in the doing of it: "The whisperer defiles his own soul, And is hated wherever he sojourns" (Sir 21:28); the curse is on the type: "Curse the whisperer and the double-tongued, For he has destroyed many who were at peace" (Sir 28:13); the third tongue does what arms cannot: "The third tongue has shaken many, And has dispersed them from nation to nation; Even strong cities has it pulled down" (Sir 28:14); the wound is greater than the sword's: "The stroke of a whip makes a mark, But the stroke of a tongue breaks bones" (Sir 28:17); the body-count is greater than war's: "Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, But not so many as have fallen by the tongue" (Sir 28:18); and Hades is preferable to its yoke: "For its yoke is a yoke of iron, And its bands are bands of brass; The death of it is an evil death, And Hades is more profitable than it" (Sir 28:20-21). Sirach's image for the wise man's mouth follows: a hedge of thorns around the possession, a door and a bar at the lips: "See that you hedge your possession about with thorns; And for your mouth make a door and a bar" (Sir 28:24). The wisdom tradition does not treat the slandering tongue as a small sin; it treats it as the Pit and the deep of Sheol speaking through a man's lips (Sir 51:5-6).
Proverbs supplies the social effect. Slander destroys the neighbor: "With his mouth the godless man destroys his fellow man" (Prov 11:9). Slander separates friends: "A perverse man scatters abroad strife; And a whisperer separates best friends" (Prov 16:28); "He who covers a transgression seeks love; But he who harps on a matter separates best friends" (Prov 17:9). Slander keeps the fire burning: "For lack of wood the fire goes out; And where there is no whisperer, contention ceases" (Prov 26:20). And slanderous talk is sweet on the way down and lodged after: "The words of a whisperer are as dainty morsels, And they go down into the innermost parts" (Prov 18:8; repeated Prov 26:22). The angry face follows from the wagging tongue: "The north wind brings forth rain: So does a backbiting tongue an angry countenance" (Prov 25:23). And the slanderer is, finally, named: "He who hides hatred is of lying lips; And he who utters a slander is a fool" (Prov 10:18).
Talebearing and Whispering
A recurring sub-form is the man who carries words back and forth. The law forbids it (Lev 19:16). The wisdom tradition warns that company with him is dangerous: "He who goes about as double-tongued reveals secrets; But he who is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter" (Prov 11:13); "He who goes about as a talebearer reveals secrets; Therefore don't company with him who opens his lips wide" (Prov 20:19). The Psalter records the felt experience of being whispered about: "All who hate me whisper together against me; Against me they devise my hurt" (Ps 41:7). Paul lists whispering and backbiting in the catalog of Gentile vice he applies to humanity at large: the wicked are "filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things" (Rom 1:29-30). The same vices reappear in his fear for the Corinthian church: "lest by any means, when I come, I should find you⁺ not such as I want, and should myself be found by you⁺ such as you⁺ would not want; lest by any means there should be strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults" (2 Cor 12:20).
Slander Against the Righteous
The Psalter's most frequent posture is that of the righteous man under slander. David hears it everywhere: "I have heard the defaming of many, Terror on every side: While they took counsel together against me, They devised to take away my soul" (Ps 31:13). The mouths opened against him are the wicked's mouths: "For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit they have opened against me: They have spoken to me with a lying tongue. They have surrounded me also with words of hatred, And fought against me without a cause" (Ps 109:2-3). The conspiracy is laid in his absence: "Those also who seek after my soul lay snares [for me]; And those who seek my hurt speak mischievous things, And meditate deceits all the day long" (Ps 38:12). Even the closest relations are not exempt — "You sit and speak against your brother; You slander your own mother's son" (Ps 50:20) — and the Psalmist resolves to live among none of it himself: "Whoever secretly slanders his fellow man, I will destroy him: I will not allow him who has a high look and a proud heart" (Ps 101:5). The standing prayer is for Yahweh to be the slandered man's vindicator: "Let the lying lips be mute, Which speak against the righteous insolently, With pride and contempt" (Ps 31:18); "Deliver my soul, O Yahweh, from lying lips, [And] from a deceitful tongue" (Ps 120:2).
David himself, in life, refuses to listen to slander against another. Confronted with what Saul has heard about him, his line is: "Why do you harken to the words of man, saying, Look, David seeks your hurt?" (1 Sam 24:9). Slander is not to be lent an ear.
Narrative Examples
The narratives furnish the test cases. Joseph is slandered by Potiphar's wife, who turns the same garment that proved his innocence into the weapon of his prosecution: "she called to the men of her house, and spoke to them, saying, See, he has brought in a Hebrew to us to mock us... and it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment by me, and fled out" (Gen 39:14-18). The land of Canaan is slandered by ten of the twelve spies — the law's rare technical phrase "evil report" attaches to them: "the men, whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up an evil report against the land" (Num 14:36). Naboth is slandered out of his vineyard and his life by Jezebel's letters, with two suborned witnesses to do the work: "Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people: and set two men, base fellows, before him, and let them bear witness against him, saying, You cursed God and the king" (1 Kings 21:9-10) — and the elders execute the plan: "the base fellows bore witness against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth cursed God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him to death with stones" (1 Kings 21:13). Jeremiah's enemies devise the same kind of campaign — the mouth in place of the sword: "Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah... Come, and let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words" (Jer 18:18). Ezekiel itemizes slander among the bloodguilty's other crimes: "Slanderous men have been in you to shed blood" (Ezek 22:9). And Jeremiah's wider diagnosis of his society is that this is now habitual: "Take⁺ heed every one of his fellow man, and don't trust⁺ in any brother; for every brother will completely supplant, and every fellow man will go about with slanders" (Jer 9:4); "they have taught their tongue to speak lies" (Jer 9:5).
The Christ Slandered
The gospel narratives present the Christ himself as the typical slandered righteous man. The trial before the Sanhedrin takes the standard shape: "many bore false witness against him, and their witness didn't agree together" (Mark 14:56) — and yet his condemnation is voted on the basis of what the false witnesses produced: "You⁺ have heard the blasphemy: what do you⁺ think? And they all condemned him to be worthy of death" (Mark 14:64). The Sabbath-controversies are framed as deliberate watching for material to accuse him: "the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, whether he would heal on the Sabbath; that they might find how to accuse him" (Luke 6:7). The charge of demonic possession is made and remade: "Do we not say well that you are a Samaritan, and have a demon?" (John 8:48); "He has a demon, and is insane; why do you⁺ hear him?" (John 10:20); the same charge was made against the Baptist before him: "John the Baptist has come eating no bread nor drinking wine; and you⁺ say, He has a demon" (Luke 7:33). Reviling continues all night: "And many other things they spoke against him, reviling him" (Luke 22:65). And the political charge before Pilate is laid: "We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king" (Luke 23:2). The same verbal pattern lies underneath the Jews' anger at his self-disclosure as Father's Son: "the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18). The Christ stands inside the Psalter's posture of the slandered righteous man and absorbs it.
Slander Against the Servants of God
The apostolic experience runs along the same line. Paul lists evil report among the credentials of his ministry: "by glory and shame, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and [yet] true" (2 Cor 6:8); and the apostolic posture is to bless under reviling: "being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things, even until now" (1 Cor 4:12-13). Peter expects it of every Christian: "in which they think it strange that you⁺ do not run with [them] into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of [you⁺]" (1 Pet 4:4). His pastoral counsel is that the Christian's good behavior is itself the reply: "having your⁺ behavior seemly among the Gentiles; that, in what they speak against you⁺ as evildoers, they may by your⁺ good works, which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1 Pet 2:12); "yet with meekness and fear, having a good conscience; that, in what you⁺ are spoken against, they may be put to shame who revile your⁺ good manner of life in Christ" (1 Pet 3:16). The same line appears in Titus 3:1-2 as a settled instruction: "Put them in mind to be in subjection to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, not to be contentious, to be gentle, showing all meekness toward all men" (Titus 3:1-2). And Jude warns of those who go the other way: "in their dreamings defile the flesh, and set at nothing dominion, and rail at dignities" (Jude 1:8).
The Tongue to Be Restrained
The remedy on the speaker's side is the bridled tongue. The Psalmist receives it as wisdom: "Keep your tongue from evil, And your lips from speaking guile" (Ps 34:13). Peter quotes the verse to the diaspora as part of the Christian ethic: "He who would love life, And see good days, Let him refrain his tongue from evil, And his lips that they speak no guile" (1 Pet 3:10). Proverbs treats the kept mouth as the kept soul: "He who guards his mouth keeps his soul; [But] he who opens his lips wide will have destruction" (Prov 13:3); "Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue Keeps his soul from troubles" (Prov 21:23). James gives the same diagnosis as a religion-test: "If any man thinks himself to be religious, while he doesn't bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's religion is useless" (Jas 1:26); and explicitly forbids speaking against a brother: "Don't speak one against another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother, or judges his brother, speaks against the law, and judges the law" (Jas 4:11). Sirach gives the wisdom-tradition's blessing: "Blessed is the common man whose mouth has not grieved him; And whose heart would not bring judgment upon him" (Sir 14:1); and prays for help: "O that one would set a watch over my mouth, And a seal of shrewdness upon my lips, That I should not fall by them" (Sir 22:27).
The apostolic catalogs prescribe putting the whole class of speech-vice off as old clothing: "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and railing, be put away from you⁺, with all malice" (Eph 4:31); "Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings" (1 Pet 2:1). And Paul names slander as woman-specific in the household codes — older women are "not slanderers, not enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which is good" (Titus 2:3); the wives of deacons "in like manner [must be] grave, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things" (1 Tim 3:11).
Slander as the Devil's Work
The end of the topic returns slander to its source. The accuser of the brothers is named in Revelation as the one cast down: "Now has come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our brothers is cast down, who accuses them before our God day and night" (Rev 12:10). Slander is what the satan does for a living. Against this stand the people of God who are characterized by what they will not do — "He who does not slander with his tongue, Nor does evil to his friend, Nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor" (Ps 15:3) — and by what they will become: "And in their mouth was found no lie: they are without blemish" (Rev 14:5). The slandering tongue is a satanic property in act, and the city of God is constituted by mouths that have stopped doing it.