What Does Proverbs 25:18 Mean?
A man who answers his neighbor with false witness is a maul, and a sword, and a sharpened arrow.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “maul” also means “scatterer,” revealing how false testimony strikes both a person and the bond between neighbors.
THE MEANING
A false testimony against a neighbor becomes force in the present: it strikes, cuts, and pierces like three weapons. Its harm reaches the person and scatters the trust that lets people remain neighbors.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that speech cannot truly injure unless a hand is raised: false witness itself carries the force of a club, a blade, and an arrow.
THE ROOT
מֵפִיץ
mēp̄îṣ
GROWS FROM
פוץ
pūṣ: to scatter, disperse, or drive apart.
The word rendered “maul” carries the sense of a scatterer. False witness does not only strike its target; its force disperses the trust that holds neighbors together.
ALSO GROWS
wayyāpeṣ: and he scattered
וַיָּפֶץ
Genesis 11:8 uses this form for scattering across the earth, making separation part of the root’s meaning.
hēp̄îṣ: he caused to scatter or spread
הֵפִיץ
This form makes scattering an action done to others, echoing how false testimony can fracture a community.
שָׁנוּן
shānûn
GROWS FROM
שׁנן
shānan: to sharpen or whet; the same root also conveys diligent instruction.
“sharpened arrow” in this verse is shānûn. The arrow is described with a word from the root for sharpening. That root also shapes the word for teaching diligently, showing how language can be honed to lodge in a hearer, or turned into a weapon against a neighbor.
ALSO GROWS
shānan: to sharpen or whet
שָׁנַן
This is the root’s basic action, giving the arrow its image of deliberate sharpness.
veshinnantam: teach them diligently
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם
Deuteronomy 6:7 uses this root for instruction, revealing that the same sharpness of language can carry teaching as well as harm.
THE PATTERN
Speech becomes bodily force when it pierces, deceives, or sets destruction moving.
There is one who blurts like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is healing.Your tongue plans ruin, like a sharp razor, goading deceit.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
So the LORD scattered them from there across the face of all the earth; and they let go of building the city.The Hebrew verb “scattered” comes from פוץ (pūṣ, “to scatter”), the same root as מֵפִיץ (mēp̄îṣ, “scatterer”), rendered “maul” here. This verse makes visible how false testimony can disperse the bond between neighbors as well as strike an individual.
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