Rabbi Johanan said in the name of Rabbi Joseph ben Zimra that anyone who bears evil tales (, lashon hara) will be visited by the plague of skin disease (, tzara’at), as it is said in Psalm "Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him will I destroy (azmit)." The Gemara read azmit to allude to , tzara’at, and cited how says "in perpetuity" (la-zemitut). And Resh Lakish interpreted the words of "This shall be the law of the person with skin disease (metzora)," to mean, "This shall be the law for him who brings up an evil name (motzi shem ra)." And the Gemara reported that in the Land of Israel they taught that slander kills three persons: the slanderer, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom the slander is told.Babylonian Talmud Arakhin 15b, in, e.g., Talmud Bavli, elucidated by Mendy Wachsman, Feivel Wahl, Yosef Davis, Henoch Moshe Levin, Israel Schneider, Yeshayahu Levy, Eliezer Herzka, Dovid Nachfolger, Eliezer Lachman, and Zev Meisels, edited by Yisroel Simcha Schorr and Chaim Malinowitz (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 2004), volume 67, pages 15b2–5.
