The poetical books of the Bible – Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes – speak quite elaborately about wisdom and folly. In several passages folly is roundly condemned. Nowhere in Scripture is a fool given any chance. Yet there are two instances where certain categories of people are rated lower than a fool. Proverbs 26:12 says a fool has brighter chance than the man who is self-conceited. Then in Proverbs 29:20 a person who is hasty with words is considered worse than a fool. What took decades to build can be ruined in one hour of verbal indiscretion.

“Since no man can properly put the tongue under control, it is up to God the creator of all things to help in this difficult but necessary task. We must make the prayer of the Psalmist ours too, that God might keep the door of our lips.”

James lends credence to the power of the tongue. He narrated how through divine intelligence man has been able to tame all kinds of beasts, including the most vociferous in the animal kingdom. All this power of man then seems to crash down when James compared that to his inability to control the tongue. He describes the tongue, little as it is, as an unruly evil, full of deadly poison (James 3:8). Stressing further the power of the tongue, he noted that a little spark of fire can cause ruin to an entire forest. This lends credence to the prayer of the psalmist in our passage. Since no man can properly put the tongue under control, it is up to God the creator of all things to help in this difficult but necessary task. We must make the prayer of the Psalmist ours too, that God might keep the door of our lips.