Scripture Daily

Context No. 305 of 4322 · Ecclesiastes

Context · Reflection

Ecclesiastes 10:11-20: in context

11If the snake bites before it is charmed, then is there no profit for the charmer’s tongue. 12The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious; but a fool is swallowed by his own lips. 13The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness; and the end of his talk is mischievous madness. 14A fool also multiplies words. Man doesn’t know what will be; and that which will be after him, who can tell him? 15The labor of fools wearies every one of them; for he doesn’t know how to go to the city. 16Woe to you, land, when your king is a child, and your princes eat in the morning! 17Happy are you, land, when your king is the son of nobles, and your princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness! 18By slothfulness the roof sinks in; and through idleness of the hands the house leaks. 19A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes the life glad; and money is the answer for all things. 20Don’t curse the king, no, not in your thoughts; and don’t curse the rich in your bedroom, for a bird of the sky may carry your voice, and that which has wings may tell the matter.

Ecclesiastes 10 is a string of observations, and most of them circle the same organ: the mouth. The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious, the Teacher says, but a fool is swallowed by his own lips. The fool starts talking in foolishness and ends in a kind of ranting madness, and he multiplies words endlessly, going on and on as though he knew the future, which no one does. The picture is of a person talked right into destruction by his own unrestrained speech.

Set against the fool is the wise person, whose words are few and gracious, and who knows that the tongue can either grace a room or consume the one using it. And then the passage ends with one of its most quoted lines, a warning about the words we assume are safe. Do not curse the king even in your thoughts, the Teacher says, and do not curse the rich even in your bedroom, for a bird of the air may carry your voice, and something with wings may report what you said. It is an ancient way of saying that nothing is truly off the record. The private grumble, the muttered contempt behind a closed door, the thing said only to yourself, has a way of getting out and finding the very person it was about.

The whole passage takes words seriously, including the ones we think are protected by walls or by whispering. What have I said in private, the resentment or the contempt I let out only where I thought no one could hear, that I would not want a bird of the air to carry to the person it was about?

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