2. The sea urchin, armed with points which it uses as feet, is the terror of every fish. Likewise, the backbiter is armed with thorny spines inside and out. No matter where you touch him, beware! Beware of his traps, or you will get caught by his hook! There's the sea urchin: the backbiter is coming! If you ask him "What's new?" he will answer you at once, "So-and-so got drunk yesterday. Someone else was gambling with infernal passion. I saw this man entering a house of ill-repute; that one is always fighting; and that other one cheated a salesman out of twenty dollars." These are the barbs of that sea urchin, these are his words. Therefore, he is the terror of every man. For the Holy Spirit says, "A man full of tongue is terrible in his city, and he that is rash in his word shall be hateful." (9)
(9) Sir 9:25
3. The backbiter is a beetle and a leech. Saint John Chrysostom remarks, "Everyone flees a backbiter like unhealthy mud, like a leech that feeds on blood, a beetle that feeds in the mire -- that is, on others' defects." As for you, act like bees: gather flowers from thorns and use them to make your honey.
Guillaume Perald says, "The mouth of the backbiter and slanderer is the basin the devil uses to wash his hands." That basin contains not holy water, but the impure water of detraction. The devil pours this filthy water onto many; not on their face, true, but on their back. For the backbiter harms people who are absent, not present, just as the leech draws blood from behind. Now, let all who are in the habit of backbiting others learn that oftentimes those who reveal the crimes of others are more sinful than those who commit them.
4. The backbiter resembles a hog. When it enters a garden, a hog does not run into the flowers, but into the manure. The backbiter does not seek to edify, but scandalize; he feeds off forbidden objects.
When Balaam refused to curse Israel, King Balac told him angrily, "Come with me to another place from which you can see only some and not all of Israel, and from there curse it for me." (10) The king thought the great throng of people was preventing Balaam from cursing it. It is characteristic of backbiters to criticize only a part of what others have done. If they said what their neighbor did before or afterwards, they would be giving their listeners a very different opinion of him.
(10) Num 23:13
Besides, is anything in this world free from all imperfection, safe from all criticism?
The moon is a magnificent heavenly body, but it does have its craters. The sun is far nobler and brighter than the moon, yet it is not perfect in every point. (11) In order to be mistaken as little as possible, look at something on the whole, and its collective symmetry will justify its less perfect parts.
(11) Christopher Scheiner, De macul sol
5. The backbiter resembles the lion and the hyena. Someone once asked Theocritus, "What is the most ferocious animal of all?" and he replied, "In the mountains and forests, I think it is lions and bears. In the cities and towns, it is money-lenders and backbiters." (12) And since they do not spare even the dead, it is only fitting to compare them to the hyena. Like the wolf, the hyena is so avid for human flesh that it digs into graves and unburies corpses in order to eat their flesh.
(12) Aristotle, De animal, Book 7, Chapter 4
The discreet and prudent man must take great care to safeguard his reputation from the tongues of others. If he knows something blameworthy about others, he should bury it in silence as in good ground. But the backbiter drags the nauseating, rotten flesh of corpses out of their tombs, bringing hidden vices to light and reminding us of crimes that should be forgotten. He resembles the lion and the hyena.
6. The backbiter is a counterfeiter and a thief. He wears down coins so that no one wants them any more. "Lets get rid of this coin," people say. "It is eaten away, it is no longer any good." This is how backbiting tongues, with the traps they set, prevent so many from emerging from their tombs; or if they do come out they force them back into their former darkness as soon as they spy an occasion to attack their reputation or fortune.
Many who would behave like honest men and Christians have been bitten so hard by backbiters and so blackened by wicked words that people always find something wrong with them. Emperor Vespasian ordered backbiters and gossipers flogged with rods and then sent into exile. Augustus wanted them burned alive. Antoninus wanted them put to death. For, according to Solomon, it is backbiting "that men find abominable." (13)
(13) Prov 24:9
True, it is not the worst of evils to be loathed by all, since Christ told His Apostles they would be hated by all men, adding that it would be for His name's sake." (14) The backbiter, however, is hated not only by all men, but by God Himself. Saint Paul says, "Detractors are hateful to God." (15) Follow the advice of Solomon: "Have nothing to do with backbiters, for their destruction arises suddenly, and who can measure their ruin?" (16)
(14) Mt 10:22
(15) Rom 1:30
(16) Prov 24:21-