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Don’t curse the king even in your thoughts, and don’t curse rich people even in your bedroom. A bird may carry your words, or some winged creature may repeat what you say. (Eccl 10:20 GW) [context– Eccl 10:16-20]
Winged Words
Words can fly out of our mouths without much thought on our part. It’s as if our thoughts escape our lips without our permission. This is what’s meant by the saying, “I just put my foot in my mouth.”
We’ve all done this at some point in life and some of us are more proficient in doing this than others.
Social media platforms create an opportunity for this to happen exponentially. I’m convinced that for far too many people this disconnect between thoughts and spoken words is more prevalent since the advent and popularity of social media.
The damage of misspoken words used to be somewhat limited to whoever was immediately present. If wayward words were repeated outside the immediate circle of hearers, they could be dismissed as hearsay or that they were taken out of context. Not any more.
Easy access to the internet and the ease of forwarding, sharing, or retweeting tends to immortalize thoughts that should never have been uttered.
Especially within the current cancel-culture. What was said in years past can be dredged up and used against people. The idea of something taken out of context, a person’s motives, or intent is dismissed. Even what is untrue and fabricated becomes true when repeated enough times.
Misinformation is spread about misinformation and takes on a life of its own.
Shockingly, way too many public figures seem to ignore the simple wisdom of being careful what they say or post. It’s a costly mistake much of the time.
You’d think people would learn from the mistakes of others. But, alas, we humans don’t seem to learn that lesson very well. Chalk it up to human nature being what it is and the simple truth that there’s nothing new under the sun in this life.
Insights
Solomon was a wise and brilliant man, although he didn’t always follow his own advice.
He was wise but not clairvoyant. When Solomon said, “A bird may carry your words...,” he wasn’t referring to Twitter. Long before Twitter or Facebook or gossip columns and shows, private conversations have been passed along and repeated to others who were never intended to hear them.
Before the phrase an unnamed source became popular, the expression a little birdie told me was often used to hide the source of confidential or private talk.
The emergence of internet journalists no longer seems to require verifiable facts or sources. There are so many conflicting reports and misinformation from unknown origins, it’s hard to know what is true or false.
In these last few verses of Chapter 10, Solomon gives a few more proverbial sayings. As always, these sayings need to be understood from an ancient cultural view.
Although Solomon was not a prophet as Samuel or Isaiah, verses 16-17 seem to look ahead to his successor as king of Israel. Soon after his death, Solomon’s son Rehoboam didn’t handle his inherited authority with the wisdom of his father. This resulted in a rebellion and Israel was split into two kingdoms.
The leader of the northern kingdom of Israel had been one of Solomon’s officials who rebelled, then fled to Egypt to escape Solomon’s efforts to kill him. The background to this history can be found in Chapters 11–12 in the book of 1Kings.
The gist of these two verses is related to character and knowing how to handle authority. People who don’t understand the far-reaching responsibilities of authority aren’t good leaders and often abuse and misuse their authority.
The proverbial sayings of verses 18-19 are self-explanatory for the most part and expressed earlier by Solomon in Ecclesiastes. I think the last verse is the most relevant and applicable for our times.
Here it is from the Message version—
Don’t bad-mouth your leaders, not even under your breath, And don’t abuse your betters, even in the privacy of your home. Loose talk has a way of getting picked up and spread around. Little birds drop the crumbs of your gossip far and wide. (Eccl 10:20 MSG)
Existential Reflections
In America, we live at a time when free speech isn’t so free. Several factors contribute to increased restrictions on what is allowed as free speech.
Political correctness continues to redefine what is considered acceptable as terms for describing specific conditions or statuses. Cancel-culture has moralized political correctness and the socio-political polarization of our nation accentuates it.
Aside from whatever your view of these cultural trends are, being careful about what you say about others isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s as old as humankind.
And yet, human kindness has little to do with the criticisms and belittling things we say about others.
It may be true some people don’t have a big problem with belittling, critical talk about others. But we’ve all uttered unkind things about others at some point in our lives. Perhaps more than we’d like to admit.
Some of us may be more prone to say negative things about others, but we all think such things. And as mentioned before, some of these thoughts escape through our lips.
It would be easy to reduce the advice in verse 20 to—be careful what you say about others because it could come back to bite you. But I see a deeper concern.
Why do any of us think or say negative, unkind words about anyone else?
The simple answer is—because we’re human. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are by nature more concerned about ourselves than anyone else.
Even though we may have a low opinion of ourselves, we generally regard our own opinion and view of others as right.
The problem we have—all of us—is that we develop a sense of self-righteousness. We justify ourselves and our view of life and others as more accurate and better than others.
Before you object to this or claim you’re not like that, remember how our first ancestors handled their original failure in life.
When Adam was questioned by God, he shifted the blame directly to his wife and indirectly upon God. Eve put the blame on the serpent with the implication that the Creator was ultimately at fault (Gen 3:9-13).
Each shifted the blame away from themselves. This is pure self-defensive, self-justifying behavior. In justifying themselves, each exalted themselves over someone else including God.
This is the essence of self-righteousness—seeing ourselves as better than others.
So, do we just need to guard what we say about others or is there more to this? There’s more to this.
We need to guard our thoughts. Especially our thoughts about others. As the old adage goes—“There but by the grace of God go I.”
When we remember God’s greatness and our smallness, we’re on the right track.
If we can keep in mind that we’re all created equal and deny our sense of self-importance, we’re less likely to say things about others that take wings and get repeated elsewhere.
It comes down to this—
When we guard our hearts and thoughts, our words are less likely to fly away where they don’t belong.
This is an excerpt from my newest book available on Amazon! Glimmers of Light in the Darkness of Life
The Scripture text for this devotional study can be found by clicking the blue button link– “Ecclesiastes Chap 10” [I’ve used God’s Word Translation (GW) for ease of reading but the button link will take you to the text in a parallel version with the NKJV text.]
Also, for further commentary, I recommend Enduring Word by Ptr David Guzik.
