At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly” (Proverbs 18:8).
We have a saying that is comparable to this. It takes two people to really hurt you. First, an enemy must say something awful about you, and secondly, a friend must come and tell you about it.
The talebearer’s faulty assumption is that more people need to hear about something than actually do. The distinction between a gossip and a talebearer is a subtle one, and there is some overlap. A gossip is someone who whispers secret and juicy details, and the emphasis is on the secretive nature of the information being shared.
A talebearer is one who circulates the story—he is the distribution platform. When a talebearer is involved, the information may have been secretive early on, but it does not remain that way for long.
A gossip shares the secret with another person. A talebearer goes from person to person. This is why a talebearer is more of a troublemaker—when you get rid of him, the strife goes away (Prov. 26:20). A talebearer reveals secrets while, by way of contrast, an upright person keeps things quiet. The idea is that the talebearer reveals secrets across territory (Prov. 11:13).
And of course, when a faithful man “conceals the matter,” he can always be accused of participating in a cover up. And then that allegation can be industriously circulated.
Coming back to the point of our proverb, a talebearer can circulate the story to all sorts of people, of course. But he can also decide to bring the story to the main character of the story, just to see his reaction. “Did you hear what so-n-so said about you?” All of us need to think twice before engaging in that kind of courier work.
There really is a temptation that the talebearer faces, which is the idea of promoting an approach that says, “let’s you and him fight.”
