Teeth
Teeth appear in scripture both as a literal feature of the body and as a charged image. They mark the difference between vigor and decrepitude, between justice that protects the helpless and violence that devours, and they become the standard figure for the rage, frustration, and despair of the wicked.
A Proverb of Irritation
The most domestic image stands first. Sour vinegar set against the teeth, and choking smoke set against the eyes, are the analogy chosen for the lazy messenger: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, So is the sluggard to those who send him" (Pr 10:26). The teeth here are simply the body's nerve, registering the small, persistent annoyance the proverb names.
Justice that Breaks the Devourer's Teeth
Teeth elsewhere belong to predators — animal and human — and the righteous response is to break them. Job remembers his old life of advocacy in just these terms: "And I broke the jaws of the unrighteous, And plucked the prey out of his teeth" (Job 29:17). The same image is taken up in prayer. The psalmist calls Yahweh to act against violent enemies in language that does not flinch: "Arise, O Yahweh; save me, O my God: For you have struck all my enemies on the cheek bone; You have broken the teeth of the wicked" (Ps 3:7), and again, "Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: Break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Yahweh" (Ps 58:6). The wicked are figured as lions, and the petition is that their devouring apparatus itself be ruined.
Teeth Broken in Affliction
The image can also turn inward. Inside the lament of Lamentations, the speaker's own teeth are crushed by what God has done to him: "He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones; he has covered me with ashes" (La 3:16). Here the broken teeth are not an enemy's — they are the sufferer's, and the breaking is part of the affliction.
Gnashing of Teeth: Rage Against the Righteous
Across the OT a recurrent gesture brings the teeth back into view: gnashing them. It is the body's outward expression of fury, almost always directed at a sufferer who cannot defend himself. Job describes God himself in just these terms: "He has torn me in his wrath, and persecuted me; He has gnashed on me with his teeth: My adversary sharpens his eyes on me" (Job 16:9). The psalmist names a circle of mockers who do the same: "Among the wicked, the godless fools Who gnashed on me with their teeth" (Ps 35:16). And in the broad portrait of Psalm 37, gnashing teeth belong to the wicked plotting against the just: "The wicked plots against the just, And gnashes on him with his teeth" (Ps 37:12). At the fall of Jerusalem, enemies do it openly: "All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you; They hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed [her] up; Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it" (La 2:16).
Gnashing of Teeth: Disappointment and Loss
Gnashing also marks the moment when malice loses its object. The wicked, watching the prosperity of the upright, melt away in frustration: "The wicked will see it, and be grieved; He will gnash with his teeth, and melt away: The desire of the wicked will perish" (Ps 112:10). The same gesture of disappointed rage carries forward into the words of Jesus, where exclusion from the kingdom is described as a place of "the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, when you⁺ will see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and yourselves cast forth outside" (Lu 13:28).
Gnashing of Teeth in Affliction
A different kind of gnashing belongs to physical torment. In the gospel scene of the demoniac boy, the father describes the seizure: "wherever it takes him, it dashes him down: and he foams, and grinds his teeth, and becomes stiff: and I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out; and they were not able" (Mr 9:18). Here grinding teeth is involuntary, the body's distress under a power it cannot throw off — the same outward sign that elsewhere expresses rage, now wrenched out of a child by an unclean spirit.