Have you ever shared something with a person in confidence, only to find out later that they told

someone else or maybe several people? You met a tailbearer. They're as old as the Old Testament,

and their habits caused trouble back then and now. In fact, the trouble spreads like weeds.

A tailbearer has this overwhelming desire to share other people's business.

Welcome to Keep the Heart podcast with Francie Taylor.

Francie is an author, teacher, and conference speaker known for sharing biblical insights that are practical and inspiring.

Now back to today's valuable study.

The word tail bearer is one that we don't use in everyday language anymore. It sounds like something

that we should be able to figure out by breaking down the word, but it's more accurate to look

it up. We want to know what it is so that we can know how not to become one, because a tailbearer

is a troublemaker. A basic definition of a tailbearer, as we would understand it today, is a malicious

gossip or someone who needs to reveal confidential information such as secrets. They just can't

keep things to themselves. Webster's 1828 dictionary provides the older picture of the word

defining a tailbearer as a person who officiously tells tales.

In the Strong's concordance, you'll find two numbers for the word tailbearer.

The Hebrew 1980, which means to walk about, to spread to carry, and then the H. 5372, which means

a whisperer, backbiter, one who murmurs or slanders.

In short, a tailbearer is a harmful person.

Let's consider three warnings about the tailbearer as we're studying this,

and then we need to examine our own lives and see if we carry any of these marks.

First, a tailbearer shares private matters.

Proverbs 1113 gives us a contrasting picture between the tailbearer and the person who has a faithful spirit. Here's what it says. A tailbearer revealseth secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.

...