I do not shout, I go cold. I say I am fine and then punish people quietly for days. I know it is dishonest, but saying it out loud feels like starting a fight.

“He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit within him; When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart. Whose hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness shall be shewed before the whole congregation.”

These lines sit in a run of proverbs about the person whose words and intentions do not match. Israel was a village culture where you could not avoid anybody for long, so concealed hostility was a real social danger: everyone polite, nothing resolved. The writer is unusually blunt about it. Sounding fine while quietly hating someone is treated as more corrosive than open conflict, not less.

“But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”

Jesus is teaching a crowd who lived among elaborate oath formulas, ways of saying something while leaving yourself an exit. His answer is startlingly plain: let your yes be yes and your no be no. Applied to a cold shoulder, it removes the option you have been living in. He is not asking you to be harsh, he is asking for a straight answer where you have been giving a coded one.