Lashon Hara and the Temptation to Play G-d
Rabbi Meyer Laniado
Most of us have been in conversations that start as an expression of pain and then turn into something more troubling. A person is frustrated, wounded, and trying to make sense of what happened. But sometimes the language becomes sharper as reputations are dissected and old grievances are revisited.
At a certain point, it no longer sounds like an attempt at finding a resolution. It sounds like a claim of authority to define another person’s life, choices, and failures. What is most unsettling to me in conversations such as these is the sense that the speaker feels entitled to stand above another person and pronounce judgment.
We often think lashon hara begins with what someone else did wrong. But often it begins somewhere else: in the desire to stand above another person and look down on them in judgment.
King David captures this posture when he gives voice to the lashon hara speaker’s inner thoughts: “With our tongues we will prevail. Our lips are with us. Who is master over us?” (Tehillim 12:5). In the phrase lilshonenu nagbir, the tongue becomes a kind of gibor, a weapon used to overpower. And in sefatenu itanu, “our lips are with us,” speech becomes something we imagine belongs entirely to us: to define, diminish, and control others. Beneath it all lies the deeper assumption: mi adon lanu, who can tell us what we may or may not say?
That is why the Gemara states that one who speaks lashon hara is as if he denies the fundamental principle of faith, ke’ilu kafar ba’ikar (Arakhin 15b). Not because he stands up and says, “I do not believe in G-D.” But because he acts as if no one, not even G-D, has a claim over how he utilizes his gift of speech.
This is also one of the oldest temptations, one we find in the Garden of Eden. The serpent lures Adam and Eve with a single phrase: vihyitem k’Elokim yod’ei tov vara, “you will be like Elokim, knowing good and evil.” As Maimonides explains, Elokim here means judges or rulers: those who decide. The temptation was not simply to know more, but to become the one who determines good and bad, proper and improper (Moreh Nevukhim 1:2). Lashon hara is that same temptation: a person reaching for the authority to declare this action good, that one shameful, as though that judgment were theirs to render.
This helps explain one of the strangest appearances of tzara’at in Tanakh. We are used to associating tzara’at with lashon hara, as the Torah in Devarim connects tzara’at with the story of Miriam (Devarim 24:8-9). Yet one of the most striking cases in Tanakh involves King Uzziah, where no lashon hara appears at all. King Uzziah brazenly entered the Beit HaMikdash to perform a service that was prescribed exclusively for the kohanim. And so, the Kohen Azariah approached him with eighty brave kohanim, and stood before the king and said: lo lekha Uzziah, “this is not for you, Uzziah” (Divrei HaYamim 2 26:18).
King Uzziah immediately becomes visibly enraged, and from that rage, vehaTzara’at zarha bemitzho, the tzara’at arose on his forehead. His self-perception and entitlement, the assumption that no boundary applied to him, burst forth for all to see (Divrei HaYamim 2 26:19).
One can almost hear Uzziah’s inner voice saying: the mi adon lanu of Tehillim, who is master over me? Who are these kohanim to stop me? I defeated enemies, fortified our city, and built an army of hundreds of thousands. Who are they to tell me no?
The Uzziah case is not a sole outlier. In discussing the cause of Tzara’at, the Gemara in Arakhin lists several reasons for this affliction, including arrogance (as we saw with Uzziah), murder, and theft (Arakhin 16a). At their root, these share a common posture: a person sees himself as the decider over another person’s life, property, or dignity. With murder, a person sees it as their prerogative to decide when to end another’s life, and with theft, a person decides that what belongs to another belongs to them. Similarly, lashon hara is when a person assumes the right to define someone else, to shape how they are seen, and to decide what their actions mean.
The affliction of Tzara’at and its healing process address this directly. The person stricken by tzara’at must stand before the kohen and be seen. The one who decided how everyone else should be viewed must now wait for the kohen to determine how he will be viewed. He cannot declare himself pure or impure; his status must be determined by someone else. And then, he must announce to others who pass by, out loud: “I am impure, I am impure.” And when he calls out “I am impure,” he is not merely warning others to keep their distance. Whether his tzara’at came from arrogance, from lashon hara, from theft, or from any of the other causes the Gemara lists, the declaration is the same. There is a Master above me. My status is His to determine, not mine. Before Him, I stand.
Lashon hara is often, at its core, not about the person being spoken about. It is about the speaker and where they imagined themself standing: above another person, above their choices, above their story. Speech becomes a mirror of that inner posture. It reveals not only what I think of someone else, but where I think I stand in relation to them.
That is why the healing is done with cedar and hyssop. As Rashi explains: “let him abandon his pride, and regard himself lowly… as a hyssop” (Rashi to Vayikra 14:4). Tzara’at came from arrogance, and thus the remedy is to lower oneself from the cedar, the tall tree standing above everyone else, and to recognize where they actually stand, like the hyssop plant, low to the ground, not above others, and not entitled to pass judgment over them.
It is not only a question about harm done to another person. It is also a question of self-understanding: “Who do I think I am when I say it?” The posture of mi adon lanu is the posture of a person who has forgotten that both he and his speech have a Master.
Before we speak, we need to hear the words Uzziah could not bear: lo lekha, this is not for you. It is not your story to author or judge. The antidote to mi adon lanu is remembering who the real Adon is. We are not Elokim yode’ei tov vera, judges appointed to stand above another person’s life and pronounce what it means. Only G-D is, and before Him, we all stand.
