What does it mean to never speak guile? It’s a word we don’t use that much today. It’s part of the word “beguile” which is found in the scriptures — when Eve blames the serpent that beguiled her — that slippery snake skillfully crafted a deceitful story about the fruit from the tree of good and evil. He mixed truth with error.
He was persuasive.
He had motives and stratagem.
He was devious.
Guile is defined as treacherous cunning, skillful deceit, insidious cunning in attaining a goal, crafty deception, slyness, deviousness, stratagems, maneuvers, subterfuges, underhandedness, double-dealing, trickery, sneaky.
The antonym or the opposite of guile is honesty.
The Old Testament uses the word guile:
Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Psalms 34:13
The New Testament has a similar verse:
For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile. 1 Peter 3:10
“Speaking with forked tongue“ is similar to guile and may have originated with the Native Americans, when they described the white man who told a lie or tricked them. This phrase became popular in early America as well.
Some reptiles have a forked tongue, split down the center at the tip which enables them to smell their environment. They flick it in and out, surveying the smells so they can sneak up on the unsuspecting victim — their next meal.
I don’t think you can really ever trust a liar. One lie leads to another. And pretty soon, the liar believes the lies that he told.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” (Sir Walter Scott)
The problem with guile is the damage it causes —
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” (Winston Churchill)
Sometimes, even when the truth gets out, the lie has caused too much damage.
