Oh, right, this is Bible verses. This is Proverbs 2518, which is telling lies about someone.

It's as harmful as hitting with a rock, wounding with a sword or shooting them with a sharp arrow.

Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow is one who gives false testimony against a neighbor.

That's this really interesting. And, of of course a tiny bit personal to me,

but this is really interesting. Why defamation, I mean, slander, defamation, whatever, right?

Let's just say defamation. Why, no, let's go with slander. Slander is more juicy.

So, why would it be so damaging to tell lies about someone, to gossip, to put them down?

Well, it's because when you slander someone, which is, you know, saying things about them that are negative and false, and usually highly negative, right? So when you slander someone or participate in that,

what you're doing is you are destroying the value of having a good reputation,

which takes many years or decades to build up.

So we all know that if thieves come along and steal stuff,

then there's no point accumulating wealth, right?

Why would you bother, as a farmer, for instance, why would you bother putting together an

amazing parcel of land and trying to figure out, like working days are nice to try and figure out

a better way to grow crops? Why would you put in all the effort to to plants and experiment

and, you know, maybe splice some crops together,

why would you put out all of the money to hire people to pick your crops?

And, well, you would do that in general because the accumulation of capital that you would gain, you would take all these crops

to the market and you would sell them. And then you would use that money to maybe buy more land

or there's a dowry for your daughters or whatever else you would use the money for. But it would be

worth putting in decades of work to become a really, really good farmer

because you could keep the proceeds of your farm work.

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