What is backbiting? It is spreading slander with the desire to hurt, annoy, humiliate, or damage someone’s reputation. It is spiteful, malicious, and false. The young widows in I Timothy 5 don’t have enough to do, and so they start wandering from house to house and ‘speaking things which they ought not.’ They are talking too much about other people’s affairs. This kind of careless speaking usually puts a spin on the real story, embellishing, exaggerating, attributing motives, complaining, and just plain making stuff up. And the truth is, God hates it.
Nancy Wilson