Exodus 23:1 You shall not raise a false report: put not your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.… The tongue of the slanderer is a devouring fire, which tarnishes whatever it touches; which exercises its fury on the good grain equally as on the chaff, on the profane as on the sacred: which, wherever it passes, leaves only desolation and ruin; digs even into the bowels of the earth, and fixes itself on things the most hidden; turns into vile ashes what only a moment before had appeared to us so precious and brilliant; acts with more violence and danger than ever in the time when it was apparently smothered up and almost extinct; which blackens what it cannot consume, and sometimes sparkles and delights before it destroys. (Massillon.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. |
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