Whisperer

The whisperer is a stock figure of the wisdom and vice catalogues — a slanderer whose voice is low, whose words travel between people instead of to them, and whose effect is the breakup of friendships and the kindling of strife.

In the Proverbs

Two proverbs frame the whisperer in opposite directions. One pictures him as the agent that pulls intimacy apart: "A perverse man scatters abroad strife; And a whisperer separates best friends" (Pr 16:28). The other pictures him as the fuel that keeps quarrels burning: "For lack of wood the fire goes out; And where there is no whisperer, contention ceases" (Pr 26:20). Take the whisperer out and the fire dies; leave him in and the strife continues.

In the Vice Lists

The same figure appears at the climax of Paul's catalogue of human disordering: those handed over by God are "being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers," (Rom 1:29). The whisperer stands in line with the open offences — murder, deceit — as one of the named symptoms of the unrighteous condition.

The same vocabulary recurs in Paul's anxiety over the Corinthian church: "For I fear, lest by any means, when I come, I should find you⁺ not such as I want, and should myself be found of you⁺ such as you⁺ do not want; lest by any means [there should be] strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults;" (2Co 12:20). Whisperings sit alongside backbitings, factions, and tumults — the disorders Paul fears most when he comes back among them.