THE MAN OF BELIAL WITHIN

Proverbs 16:27
An ungodly man diggeth up evil:
And in his lips there is as a burning fire.

The Hebrew says, The man of ‘Belial’ diggeth up evil.This refers to a man who lives outside of the parameters of Torah.

From his own heart the man of Belial digs up evil for others. He digs up a pit for others, but like Haman of old, he himself will fall in it. The man of Belial always digs a pit in view of the fall of the righteous, and his ‘digging’ tool of choice is the tongue.

Such is the man of Belial, one who lives without God’s Instructions: from his heart, evil regurgitates to his mouth and his lips become like burning bile. The righteous needs to watch out for such person coming from without, but even more from within himself.

Sometimes we can be so aware of the ungodly ‘Egyptian’ without, or of the ‘Babylonian’, or the ‘Roman’, that we forget the man of Belial that lies within us; the ‘old man’ who tries to take us back into the pit of our former ways. Can that happen?

Forsaking the Almighty’s Instructions of Torah and falling in the pit dug by disobedience has happened to the worst of people, and to the best. Again, the favorite tool of our digging is the tongue. As the apostle James so beautifully taught in his epistle, our tongue is like the rudder of a ship: it determines the direction of our walk.

Let us therefore diligently watch for the ‘man of Belial’ within us. Let us also be aware of him within our inner conversations. Let us constantly put our soul through the Torah mirror test and ask ourselves: are my thoughts and my words a reflection of Torah? Am I really reflecting the Master?