their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; asps' poison [is] under their lips
Paul has been building his case against Jew and Gentile alike. Now he turns to the Old Testament and lets God describe the human mouth. Why start with the body? Why start with words? And who is on trial?
The verse belongs to a run of quotations that names one body part after another. Writers say the order is deliberate. The charge moves from broad statements to specific ones, and most of the details concern speech.
He may complain that all these six statements are of a general nature... If he speaks like this, verses 13 to 18 confront him at once, giving the particulars. These particulars relate to six members of man's body: his throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet and eyes. It is in the body that man sins, and deeds done in the body are to be judged in the day that is before us all. Notice that of the members mentioned, no fewer than four have to do with what we say. What an awful story it is! And what language!... An "open grave", for instance! Is man's throat like the entrance to a cave filled with dead men's bones and all uncleanness and stench? It is.
The three items are not random. Older translations call the first image "an open sepulchre" — a grave left uncovered. One commentator follows the three as a stream of evil that each part makes worse instead of better.
But something does come out from man's heart. It passes from the throat first, where there is the utter corruption of death — an open grave, revolting to the eyes of the living. Then the tongue, contaminated, becomes the tool of deceit. The lips might have held back both the throat and tongue. Instead they only make the plague of evil worse, adding to it the venomous poison of asps.
Why do poisoned lips follow deceiving tongues? One grows out of the other.
The third quotation is from Psalm 140:3: "The venom of asps is under their lips." The corruption of the flesh leads to lying. And lying leads to the poison of slander, because the flesh that can lie to your face will slander you behind your back.
The verse looks at speech. But what comes out is evidence of what lies inside.
In the main it is true of man that when he speaks he shows what he is. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34). So we read, "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness" (Romans 3:13-14). All these things come out of the heart, the seat of life, "and they defile the man" (Matthew 15:18).
A reader might think this describes other people. But Paul quotes Israel's own law, and he presses it on the people who had it.
But, argues the apostle, how is it with you? What does Scripture say about yourselves? What does your own law declare about your ways?... "What the law says, it says to those who are under the law." You cannot throw that solemn sentence of God at the Gentiles. You boast of your law: so be it. But "what the law says, it says to those who are under the law."
Such a description looks like a dead end. Commentators read it as a doorway instead.
A poor end, you may say, to all this long education on God's part — all this painstaking discipline... The truth about man's condition must come out, and he must be made to realise and accept it. Guilty and with his mouth stopped before Him, he will then find what God can be for him in such a desperate situation.
The mouth that condemns a man is the mouth grace puts to new use. The law shuts it. Faith opens it again for something better.
The law speaks of what comes out of the mouth of the sinner who has never been born again. We shudder at its faithful testimony... Now the law speaks to the man under it, in order that his mouth may be stopped. A gateway open for such a flood of wickedness as this had better be shut up for ever. But if faith purifies the heart, and grace is poured into the lips, the outflow will delight the heart of the hearer.
- Particulars — Paul names six body parts in verses 13-18. Four of them have to do with speech, and the charge covers deeds done in the body.
- Progression — Throat, tongue, lips: corruption within becomes deceit, and deceit becomes slander's poison. Each stage makes the last one worse.
- Source — Speech is evidence, not the disease. What fills the heart comes out at the mouth.
- Address — Paul aimed these words at the people who had the Scriptures, not at the Gentiles. That is why every mouth ends up stopped.
- Purpose — A stopped mouth is not the end but the opening. A man with nothing left to say discovers what God can be for him, and grace turns that same gateway into a source of good.
whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness;
Romans 3:14 sits inside a chain of quotations Paul draws from the Psalms, working down the body part by part. Does this language describe ordinary people, or only the worst of them?
The words are not Paul's own. He takes them from a Psalm, and they arrive at a set point in a chain of sins.
The fourth quotation is from Psalm 10:7: "His mouth is full of cursing." Lying leads to slander, and slander leads to cursing. The slandered man hits back with cursing and bitterness.
The mouth only lets out what is already in the heart. And the people described here are religious ones.
If the heart did not hold these evils, the mouth could never pour them out. Here then we have an insight into the human heart. Note also where this awful quotation appears. It comes in the apostle's description of religious Jews, not in his account of the Gentile nations… So a person can sing the praises of God on Sunday and be guilty of cursing and bitterness towards men on Monday. Oh, the appalling corruption of the human heart! The Saviour had good reason to say: "How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matt. 12:34). Yet it is one of the hardest of all lessons to learn that the heart of every man is incurably wicked.
The verses around this one name six parts of the body. Most of the charge concerns talking.
These particulars relate to six members of man's body: his throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet and eyes. Man sins in the body, and the deeds done in the body will face judgment in the day that lies ahead of us all. Notice that of the members mentioned no fewer than four have to do with what we say. One refers to what we do, and one to what we think; for the eye is the window of the mind.
The natural defence is that this portrait fits criminals, not respectable people. One writer answers with two men raised in opposite worlds.
Some may say, "I am sure I am not as bad as that; my mouth is not full of cursing and bitterness; I have never shed blood." Perhaps not. But you have the same nature as those who do. It is only a question of the difference of the fruit produced on the same tree. Suppose two men. One is brought up among thieves from birth, surrounded by every form of open sin. He flies into a rage with another and commits murder, and he is condemned to death. The other has been raised in the greatest refinement and worldly advantage. Perhaps he would not do the same gross outward acts of sin. But the angry thought that led the one to commit murder might lead the other to do something spiteful. The same evil root is in both men.
Paul is not collecting insults. He is closing a legal case, and the verdict comes a few verses later.
We move on to Romans 3:19. Here the apostle closes his detailed accusation of the whole human race, Gentiles and Jews alike: "so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God." No one can say a single word to excuse man's universal condition of guilt and ruin. No one can give a fair reason why God should not pass sentence at once.
The letter does not leave the mouth where chapter 3 finds it. By the end of the letter the same mouth is doing something else, and self-improvement cannot explain the change.
That which was full of cursing and bitterness in Romans 3 is full of praise in Romans 15. Outward reformation could not produce so great a transformation. Only the mighty work of the Holy Spirit in the heart can do it. By that work God and Christ become known and valued.
- Sourced — Paul borrows the words from Psalm 10:7. They come after lying and slander in a downward chain.
- Symptom — the mouth is the outlet; what pours out only shows what the heart already held.
- Sweeping — four of the six body parts listed concern speech, and the charge falls on religious people too, not just the openly wicked.
- Silencing — the whole list drives at one verdict: every mouth stopped, with no excuse left to offer.
- Sanctified — reform could never do it, but the Spirit can. The mouth full of cursing in chapter 3 becomes the mouth full of praise in chapter 15.