I. THE TALE BEARER AND MISCHIEF MAKER. (Vers. 20-22.)

1. His inflammatory character. (Vers. 20, 21.) He keeps alive quarrels which, but for his vice, would die down for want of fuel. It is easy to fire the imagination with tales of evil, not so easy to quench the flames thus kindled. If the character is odious, let us beware of countenancing it by opening our ears to scandal. Personal gossip has in our day become an offence in the public press. But were there no receivers, there would be no thieves. If we cannot stop the scandalmonger's month, we can stop our own ears; and "let him see in our face that he has no room in our heart."

2. The pain he causes. (Ver. 22.) Slander is deadly - it "outvenoms all the worms of Nile." "A whispered word may stab a gentle heart." "What weapon can be nearer to nothing than the sting of a wasp? yet what a painful wound may it give! The scarce-visible point how it envenoms and rankles and swells up the flesh! The tenderness of the part adds much to the grief." If God has given us a sting, or turn for satire, may we use it for its proper work - to cover evil with contempt, and folly with ridicule, and not at the devilish instigation of envy and spite. Let us dread and discourage the character of the amusing social slanderer.

II. THE BAD HEART. (Vers. 23-25.)

1. It may be varnished over, but is still the bad heart. It is like the common sherd covered with impure silver, the common wood with veneer. The burning lips seem here to mean glowing professions of friendship. like the kiss of Judas.

2. Duplicity is the sign of the bad heart. The dissembler smiles, and murders while he smiles. The fair face hides what the false heart doth know.

"Neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone. Oft, though wisdom wakes, suspicion sleeps At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems."

3. The need of prudence and reserve. "Trust not him that seems to be a saint." Indeed, it is an error to place perfect trust in anything human or finite. But the special warning here is against suffering flattery to blind us to the real character of one who has once been revealed in his true colours.

III. THE EXPOSURE OF WICKEDNESS. (Vers. 26, 27.) Vain is the attempt of men to conceal for any length of time their real character. What they say and what they do not say, do and do not do, reveals them sooner or later. And the revelation brings its retribution. The intriguer falls into his own pit, is crushed beneath the stone he set in motion. Curses come home to roost; the biter is bitten; and the villain suffers from the recoil of his own weapon. This appears also to be the sense of ver. 28. Though a lie has no legs, it has wings, and may fly far and wide, but it "hates its own master" (according to one rendering), and flies back to perch on his shoulder and betray him to his ruin. - J.

Another, and perhaps a better, translation is this, "Unsteady as the sparrow, as the flight of the swallow, is a causeless curse; it cometh not to pass." "There is a difficulty here," says Wardlaw, "in settling the precise point in the comparison. The ordinary interpretation explains it with reference to curses pronounced by men without cause — imprecations, anathemas, that are unmerited — and the meaning is understood to be — as the bird or sparrow, by wandering, and as the swallow, or wood-pigeon, by flying, shall not come — that is, shall not reach us or come upon us in the way of injury — so is it with the causeless curse. It will "do no more harm than the bird that flies overhead, than Goliath's curses on David." And it might be added that, as these birds return to their own place, to the nests whence they came, so will such gratuitous maledictions come back upon the persons by whom they are uttered.

I. MEN ARE FREQUENTLY THE VICTIMS OF HUMAN IMPRECATIONS. Few men pass through the world without creating enemies, either intentionally or otherwise. Men vent their hatred in various ways.

II. THAT HUMAN IMPRECATIONS ARE SOMETIMES UNDESERVED. The curse is "causeless." Sometimes the curses of men are deserved. There are two classes of causeless curses —

1. Those that are hurled at us because we have done the right thing. When you are cursed for reproving evil, for proclaiming an unpopular truth, or pursuing a righteous course which clashes with men's prejudices or interests, the curse is causeless.

2. Those that are uttered without reason or feeling. There are men who are so in the habit of using profane language that it almost flows from their lips without malice or meaning. The greatest men in history have been cursed, and some of them have died under a copious shower of human imprecations.

III. UNDESERVED IMPRECATIONS ARE ALWAYS HARMLESS. "The greatest curse causeless shall not come." Was David the worse for Shimei's curse? or Jeremiah for the curse of his persecutors? "He that is cursed without a cause," says Matthew Henry, "whether by furious imprecations or solemn anathemas, the curse will do him no more harm than the sparrow that flies over his head. It will fly away like the sparrow or the wild swallow, which go nobody knows where, until they return to their proper place, as the curse will at length return to him that uttered it." "Cursing," says Shakespeare, "ne'er hurts him, nor profits you a jot. Forbear it, therefore, — give your cause to heaven." But if the curse be not causeless, it will come. Jotham's righteous curse came upon Abimelech and the men of Shechem (Judges 9:56, 57). Elisha's curse fearfully came to the young mockers of Bethel (2 Kings 2:24). "The curse abides on Jericho from generation to generation."

(Homilist.)