They utter vanities one to the other; they speak with a lip of smooth speech and with a double heart.
1.
[שָׁוְא] (SHAV) - vanity
-is the crassest contrast to the veracity of the spoken word. SHAV can mean everything or nothing; it has no real content.
2.
[רֵ֫עֵ֥הוּ] (reyʿeyhu)
[רֵעַ] from [רֵעַה] - to graze
is the basic concept of the relationship that people should have toward one another. Everyone should see in his neighbor his own “pasture”; that is, a source of strength, and, at the same time, he should also act as a complement and support to the others.
That word which still bears the form and stamp of such a relationship and publicly exhibits such an ideal state of human society, when mutual trust and support have actually ceased to exist, is SHAV, “specious".
3.
[חֲלָק֑וֹת] (chalokos) - smooth talk
[חָלָק] (chalaq)- smooth, derived from
[חלק] (chalaq) - to divide
The concept of smoothness coincides with that of a completed division, or separation. Nothing can ever cleave to a surface that is entirely smooth, or support itself thereon. All of speech has been “polished”, and words and expressions have been deprived of all their “sharpness” and their effect. They are now “polished smooth” to the extent that they can offer no firm foundation for anything. Speech is filled with smooth expressions of humbleness and sham obedience, when actually the speaker bears within his heart feelings that are very different from those he feigns with his polished tongue.