Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins. (Proverbs 10:12 KJV)
Hatred stirreth up strifes; But love covereth all transgressions. (Proverbs 10:12 ASV)
Hatred stirreth up strifes; but love covereth all transgressions. (Proverbs 10:12 DBY)
Hatred awaketh contentions, And over all transgressions love covereth. (Proverbs 10:12 YLT)
Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all wrongs. (Proverbs 10:12 WEB)
Interlinear
Hatred <sin’ah> stirreth up <`uwr> strifes: <m@dan> but love <‘ahabah> covereth <kacah> all sins. <pesha`> (Proverbs 10:12 KJV)
Matthew Poole’s Commentary
Ver. 12. Hatred stirreth up strifes upon every slight occasion, by filling men with suspicions and surmises, whereby they imagine faults where there are none, and aggravate every small offence.
Love covereth all sins; either doth not severely observe, or doth willingly forget and forgive, the offences or injuries of others, and so preventeth contention and mischief.
Thomas Haweis
Verse 12: Where hatred is in the heart, there will never be wanting occasion for strifes; for every look and word will be misinterpreted into a provocation; and where such a temper reigns, it will be ever scattering insinuations, calumnies, and lies, to kindle the fire of contention: but love covereth all sin; draws the veil of oblivion over all affronts and injuries, conceals the evil which may be hid, and wishes to extenuate what cannot.
Spurgeon’s Devotional Commentary
Loving spirits will not take offence, but bear and forbear for Christ’s sake, but evil-disposed persons make the smallest matter a ground of offence, and are for ever fanning the fires of enmity. Let it not be so among us.
Matthew Henry’s Commentary
Here is,
1. The great mischief-maker, and that is malice. Even where there is no manifest occasion of strife, yet hatred seeks occasion and so stirs it up and does the devil’s work. Those are the most spiteful ill-natured people that can be who take a pleasure in setting their neighbours together by the ears, by tale-bearing, evil surmises, and misrepresentations, blowing up the sparks of contention, which had lain buried, into a flame, at which, with an unaccountable pleasure, they warm their hands.
2. The great peace-maker, and that is love, which covers all sins, that is, the offences among relations which occasion discord. Love, instead of proclaiming and aggravating the offence, conceals and extenuates it as far as it is capable of being concealed and extenuated. Love will excuse the offence which we give through mistake and unadvisedly; when we are able to say that there was no ill intended, but it was an oversight, and we love our friend notwithstanding, this covers it. It will also overlook the offence that is given us, and so cover it, and make the best of it: by this means strife is prevented, or, if begun, peace is recovered and restored quickly. The apostle quotes this, 1Pe 4:8. Love will cover a multitude of sins.
Extract from Proverbs Appendix. See MHC for Pr 31:31
9. Of love and hatred, peaceableness and contention, Pr 10:12; 15:17; 17:1,9,14,19; 18:6,17-19; 20:3; 25:8; 26:17,21; 29:9.