“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”
My Notes
What Does Proverbs 18:21 Mean?
Solomon makes one of the most powerful statements about speech in all of Scripture: death and life are in the power of the tongue. Your words carry lethal or life-giving force. There is no neutral category.
"They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof" adds consequence. The tongue produces fruit — either good or bad — and you will consume what your own words produce. If you love speaking, you will live with the results of what you have said.
The Hebrew word for "power" (yad) literally means hand — the tongue has a hand, an ability to act. Words do things. They build or destroy, heal or wound, give life or deal death.
This is wisdom literature at its most practical: your mouth is the most powerful tool you possess. Use it carelessly and you will eat the fruit of destruction. Use it wisely and you will eat the fruit of life.
Reflection Questions
- 1.What words have been spoken over you that carried death — and what words have given you life?
- 2.What 'fruit' are you currently eating from your own words?
- 3.How do the words you speak to yourself affect your inner life?
- 4.What would change if you took seriously that every word carries either death or life?
Devotional
Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Not might be. Are. Your words have the power to kill something in someone — their confidence, their hope, their sense of self. And they have the power to give life — to speak courage into someone who is faltering, truth into someone who is lost, hope into someone who has given up.
You are using that power every single day. In every conversation. In every offhand comment. In the words you speak to yourself in the mirror.
They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. Whatever you plant with your words, you will harvest. If you plant criticism, you will live in a critical environment. If you plant encouragement, you will live in an encouraging one. The fruit is a direct product of the seed.
What are you speaking? Not just out loud — but internally, in the running commentary of your own mind? Death or life? Those are the options. And both are in the power of the thing sitting in your mouth right now.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,.... Of witnesses, according to the testimony they bear; of judges,…
Note, 1. A man may do a great deal of good, or a great deal of hurt, both to others and to himself, according to the use…
love it i.e. delight in using it, as an instrument either of "death" or of "life."
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture