📖 Biblical Definition
"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matt 12:34). Scripture treats the mouth as a heart-meter. Confession is made with the mouth (Rom 10:9-10); blessing and cursing come from the same mouth and should not (Jas 3:10); the tongue inside the mouth is "a fire, a world of unrighteousness" (Jas 3:6). David prayed, "Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips" (Ps 141:3). Isaiah's mouth was touched with a burning coal to cleanse his speech before he could prophesy (Isa 6:6-7). The mouth is the biblical leak point of the heart's condition.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
MOUTH, n.
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MOUTH, n. [Sax. muth.] The aperture in the face through which food is taken and the voice is uttered. In Scripture, the mouth is the organ by which the heart is revealed — "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" — and the organ by which salvation is confessed — "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord." The guarded mouth is a mark of a sanctified soul; the unbridled mouth is the visible fruit of an unbridled heart.
📖 Key Scripture
Matthew 12:34 — "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."
Romans 10:9-10 — "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."
Psalm 141:3 — "Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!"
James 3:10 — "From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Social media has made every Christian's mouth a public fountain. What it pours out reveals more than the speaker thinks.
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The unbridled mouth of modern online speech is producing a public record that reveals the state of American Christian hearts. Rage, sarcasm, contempt, gossip, half-truths, dunking — these are flowing from the same mouths that sing hymns on Sunday. James 3:10 is unsparing: "these things ought not to be so." The cure is not better filters on the mouth; it is attention to the heart. Set a guard on the mouth, yes — but pray the Isaiah-6 prayer that God would touch your lips with a coal from the altar. Only cleansed speech comes from a cleansed heart.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
H6310 — peh. G4750 — stoma.
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H6310 — peh (פֶּה) — mouth; also used for the "edge" of a sword (cutting edge).
G4750 — stoma (στόμα) — mouth; sometimes metonymic for "speech."
Usage
"The mouth is the leak. What comes out cannot have been made in the mouth; it was already in the heart."
"Isaiah's lips were touched with a burning coal before he could prophesy. Ask for the coal."