There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise [is] health.
Ver. 18. There is that speaketh lies like the piercings of a sword.] False witnesses do so, with a witness. As Doeg, Psa 52:2 and his fellow hacksters with their murdering weapons in David's bones, Psa 42:10 whereby they killed him alive, and buried him in their throats, those gaping graves, open sepulchres. Abimelech and his fellow priests were killed with the tongue, as with a tuck or rapier; so was Naboth and his sons; so was our Saviour Christ himself. Reckon thou Shimei and Rabshakeh among the first and chiefest kill Christs, Acts 2:23 ; Act 3:15 saith one, because ever an honest mind is more afflicted with words than blows. You shall find some, saith Erasmus, that if death be threatened, can despise it; but to be belied they cannot brook, nor from revenge contain themselves. How was David enraged by Nabal's railings! Moses, by the people's murmurings! Jeremiah, by the derisions of the rude rabble. Jer 20:7-8
But the tongue of the wise is health.] Or, A medicine, as the tench is to the wounded fishes; or as that noble Lady Eleanor's tongue was to her husband, Prince Edward, afterward Edward I, who, being traitorously wounded by a poisoned knife in the Holy Land, was perfectly cured by her daily licking his rankling wounds whilst he slept, and yet herself received no harm; a so sovereign a medicine is a good tongue, anointed with the virtue of love and wisdom. Wholesome words, as certain salves or treacles, cure the wounds of afflicted hearts, and extract the poison infused by evil tongues.
a Speed, Camden.