The inconsistency of the conduct of the tongue is graphically portrayed
by these verses. Plummer happily terms it “the moral contradictions of
the reckless talker.” There is in very truth moral chaos if the
Christian does not control his tongue. Inconsistency is not an evil per
se. If one is wrong, he ought to be inconsistent enough to change and do
right. But it is terrible to see a professing Christian lightly lapse
into loose and licentious language. “The fires of Pentecost will not
rest where the fires of Gehenna are working” (Plummer).
James had spoken (1:8) of the double-minded man, unstable in all his
ways. The tongue with the gift of _double-entendre_ is one of the very
worst, for its word passes muster in polite circles and yet carries to
the initiated a sinister or salacious meaning. Epictetus (Ench. xxxiii,
§ 16) says, “But dangerous also is the approach to indecent speaking.”
But the double tongue talks one way with one person, another with
another; it is the way of hypocrisy, the slick tongue, the oily tongue
of the two-faced man whose word cannot be depended upon, whose word is
not so good as his bond.
Sirach (5:13) says: “Honor and shame are in talk; and the tongue of man
is his fall.” He also has this: “If thou blow the spark, it shall burn;
if thou spit upon it, it shall be quenched; and both these come out of
thy mouth” (28:12). It looks as if James had seen this passage from the
Twelve Patriarchs (Benjamin 6:5): “The good mind hath not two tongues,
of blessing and of cursing, of contumely and of honour, of sorrow and of
joy, of quietness and of confusion, of hypocrisy and of truth.”
We may omit the inconsistency of “sorrow and of joy,” for that is the
lot of all of us, but certainly the tongue must not play the part of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Therewith bless we the Lord and Father,” the only
instance of this precise combination of words in the Bible, expressing
God’s power and loving approachableness (cf. Matt. 11:25). The highest
function of human speech (Hort) is the praise of God the Father. Note
how when Zacharias recovered his speech, he first praised God (Luke
1:64). It is glorious to praise God in prayer, in song, in sermon. “O
Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise”
(Psalm 51:15). “Praise ye Jehovah. Praise Jehovah, O my soul. While I
live will I praise Jehovah: I will sing praises unto my God while I have
any being” (Psalm 146:1 f.).
“Bless, and curse not” (Rom. 12:14). Curse not God in anger or in
flippant profanity. The tongue that praises God surely will not profane
his name. But curse not men who are made after the likeness of God,
those who are like God in their moral and spiritual nature and not like
the beasts of the field (Gen. 1:26; 2 Cor. 3:18). And yet, _horribile
dictu_, this is precisely what we do. “Therewith curse we men.” James
here includes himself in the common run of humanity.
The tongue exercises this strange power of running away with us like a
runaway horse with the bit in his mouth. The scorn of men for men is
seen in John 7:49, in the Pharisees’ sneer at the mob: “This multitude
that knoweth not the law are accursed.” It is most likely, however,
personal abuse that James here refers to. Men who are made in God’s
image are abused by the very tongue that blesses God. We curse other
children of our common Father, God. James does not mean, even by
implication, to approve cursing at all. It is the wicked man whose
“mouth is full of cursing” (Psalm 10:7). If we do not love our brother,
we do not love God (1 John 4:20). And yet “out of the same mouth cometh
forth blessing and cursing.” We make our tongue a sort of combination of
Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. “My brethren, these things ought not so to
be”—a mild statement all the more effective from its very temperateness.
The point is easy to illustrate. “Doth the fountain send forth from the
same opening sweet water and bitter?” James was familiar with the
brackish waters of parts of Palestine. The water of the Dead Sea is
really bitter, though fed by the snows of Hermon and the sweet springs
of the Jordan valley. The waters of Marah were bitter (Ex. 15:23), and
one may recall “the water of bitterness that causeth the curse” (Num.
5:18, 23). See also Revelation 8:11 for the waters that were made
bitter. Pliny (N. H. ii. 103) tells a fable of a fountain of the sun
that “was sweet and cold at noon and bitter and hot at midnight”
(Mayor). It is possible to sweeten water, as we see in the great
filtering plants in our modern cities. And sweet water can become
bitter. But water is not sweet and bitter at the same time from the same
fountain. You have sweet water on Hermon and salt water in the Dead Sea
(also called the Salt Sea), but not both in the same place.