Words, Words, Words
They say, “With our tongues we will prevail. We own our lips—who can be our master?” Psalm 12:4 · Berean Standard Bible
These deceivers are so confident in their own power that they actually believe their words can control reality—they think they answer to nobody.
Notice the arrogance here. These aren't people making honest mistakes; they're people who've decided that if they can talk their way into something, they own it. They've removed God from the equation entirely and placed themselves as the ultimate authority over their own words and their own lives.
The psalmist is quoting the wicked, showing you exactly how they think and justify themselves.
This is the voice of human rebellion as old as the garden—the belief that we can define reality through our own words, that we're not accountable to anyone higher than ourselves. It's the same impulse that led to Babel, and it shows up repeatedly when people forget who God is.
The wicked boastfully claim their tongues and words are their ultimate power—they deny accountability to any authority, divine or human.
The phrase adoneinu mi-lo—'who is our lord?'—represents outright covenant defection, asserting autonomy from both God and established authority structures. This echoes Pharaonic absolutism (Exodus 5:2) and anticipates later Hellenistic arrogance. Archaeological and textual evidence suggests this reflects actual conditions where merchant guilds or emerging elite classes used rhetoric to resist traditional covenantal hierarchies.
Here the psalmist ventriloquizes the wicked's own words, allowing their blasphemous self-assertion to stand as self-incrimination before God's court.
This represents the archetypal human rebellion through language—the Tower of Babel motif reappearing—where human speech becomes instrument of autonomy-assertion rather than communion, setting up the contrast with divine speech in verse 6.
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?”
5“For the cause of the oppressed and for the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says the LORD. “I will bring safety to him who yearns.”
6The words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace, like gold purified sevenfold.
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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