Words, Words, Words
They lie to one another; they speak with flattering lips and a double heart. Psalm 12:2 · Berean Standard Bible
People around him are constantly lying and saying flattering things they don't mean, speaking with duplicity—their words don't match their hearts.
In that world, your word was everything. When people started using language as a tool to manipulate rather than communicate truth, it fractured society. You couldn't trust what anyone said because they were saying one thing to your face and another behind your back, motivated purely by self-interest.
The psalmist continues his description, painting a picture of the corruption he's witnessing.
This captures the reality that broken hearts produce broken speech. From Babel forward, humanity has struggled with using words to deceive rather than connect. Jesus would later teach that what comes out of your mouth reveals what's in your heart.
People have abandoned truth-telling entirely, replacing honest speech with deception and flattery motivated by divided loyalties.
The Hebrew phrase sheqer—here rendered 'lies'—connotes not mere falsehood but active betrayal of covenantal relationship through speech. Flattering lips (sefatayim chelaqot) and divided hearts (lev va-lev, literally 'heart and heart') suggest systematic duplicity in commercial, political, and social transactions where language serves manipulation rather than communion. This reflects actual conditions of commercial or diplomatic breakdown.
The psalmist continues the communal lament, now diagnosing the specific pathology—linguistic corruption as the symptom of systemic moral collapse.
This verse establishes speech-degradation as a theological problem, anticipating wisdom literature's concern with the tongue's power (Proverbs, James 3), and foreshadowing the New Testament's emphasis on truth as revelatory (logos in John's prologue).
1Help, O LORD, for the godly are no more; the faithful have vanished from among men.
2They lie to one another; they speak with flattering lips and a double heart.
3May the LORD cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue.
4They say, “With our tongues we will prevail. We own our lips—who can be our master?”
Read all of Psalm 12 — Flattering lips and boastful tongues surround the faithful. But God's words are pure — silver refined seven times.
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