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Psalm 140:3
Excerpted from: Lessons From the AnimalsPsalm 140 is about the effects of slander, the effects of gossip.
God puts several animals together here because you will see them used with various names, but they all belong to the same basic families: the adder, the asp, the cockatrice, and then (from the snake family) the viper. All four of these are used to illustrate one human trait.
The theme of this psalm is the malicious intrigue of slanderous gossip. What we need to understand is this: that none of these animals' bites (whether adder, asp, cockatrice, or viper), are necessarily lethal. In other words, it does not always kill, but it is always poisonous.
It is always poisonous and it brings with it (Just think if you were bitten by an adder or an asp. What would immediately rush through your mind?)—anguish! "Oh, no!" Fear! "I'm going to die!" Pain! "It burns like crazy!" Sometimes what occurs is partial paralysis of where the bite occurs. Sometimes the people recover from that paralysis and sometimes they do not. We are not talking about something that necessarily brings death, but it always has a very painful effect.
What happens when a person's reputation begins to be attacked through slanderous gossip? What happens when that person begins to hear about it? "Oh, no! What's happening to my reputation, my name? I worked so hard to build it up and now somebody is out there beginning to cut it down."
Now it may not be lethal. It may not destroy the person entirely. But all the while that is going on, that person is being infiltrated by a poison that is bringing him anguish and pain and bitterness, and you can believe me that it partially paralyzes that person from acting, too. In many cases their lives are pretty much devastated for quite a period of time until some repentance takes place.
Proverbs 23:32 adds that "wine is like an adder's sting." And what it adds to the meaning is that it is something whose effects sneaks up on a person and destroys their ability to function effectively. The Bible illustrates an adder's bite as being similar to the effect of gossip.
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