Ps. 36.3 (failure to communicate)

“The words / of his mouth / are wickedness / and deceitfulness; - he has given up / being wise / and doing good.” The previous verse began with what the wicked man does (“he flatters himself”) and concluded with what he could not do (“find his iniquity and hate it”). The same pattern is followed here. The first part speaks to what the wicked does (speaks wickedness and deceit). The second part of what he can’t do: be wise and do good. Again, we are seeing here the dual nature of wisdom as it is inverted by the wicked. The wise, as we have said, must do two things: love the right things and hate the wrong things. Here, the wicked man loves the wrong things and hates (or has given up on) the good things. He is like the photo negative of the wise and blessed man of Psalm 1. As to the first half: this is very familiar territory. The wicked are almost universally condemned not primarily for their actions but for their speech. Likewise, the wisdom literatures reveals a profound interest (we might even say a primary interest) in how one controls one’s tongue. It is, arguably, through one’s speech that one is identified as either a wise man or a fool. Here, when it comes to the wicked, their speech is both ‘wicked’ and ‘deceitful’. I admit I do not know what it “wicked” speech is; it is apparently different, although probably involves, ‘deceit’. Or, can these be words that, although ‘true’ are entirely self-serving, inappropriate and designed to destroy another person unjustly? Perhaps, too, we are to see the second half as working in parallel with the first: wickedness and deceit are juxtaposed to wisdom and doing good. If so, then speaking wickedness is the opposite of wisdom, as deceit would be the opposite of ‘doing good’. As to ‘deceit’: this is a constant refrain about the wicked. Their words mimic their interior state of being divided against themselves. They resemble one thing, but conceal the opposite. We should come to expect this based on what we have said already about the wicked: they “own transgression” but they cannot “find their iniquity”. In a way, the wicked, are themselves, walking lies (they cannot comprehend the magnitude of their breach of the created order and therefore their speech mimics their own interiorly disordered state of transgression). The second phrase roots this capacity for deceit and wickedness in what is essentially a failure of the will: “he has given up being wise and doing good”. Here we find the common conception of the fool in the ancient world: a person who knows the good but fails or refuses to do it. It is instructive that the wicked are, here, seen to be those who have ‘given up’, those who have surrendered in some way. Are we to see here that ‘wickedness’, this ‘state of transgression’, is a form of laxity, of a failure to persevere? Is it that man’s position is one of movement into wisdom and doing good, whereas when he ceases to do so he ‘sinks’ into transgression and wickedness?