Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it [is] an evil time.
Ver. 13. Therefore the prudent shall keep silence] According to that old and good rule, Either keep silence, or speak that which is better than silence, η σιγαν, η κρεισσονα οιγης λεγειν. There is "a time to keep silence, and a time to speak," Ecclesiastes 3:7, and it is a singular skill to time a word, Isaiah 50:4, to set it upon its circumferences, Proverbs 25:11, so to speak, and so to do, as those that shall be judged by the law of liberty, James 2:12. He that would be able to speak right and forcible words, must first learn how and when to keep silence. It is not good casting pearls before swine; nor pulling a bear or mad dog by the ear. It is the true ambition of a Christian, to study to he quiet, to meddle with his own business, 1 Thessalonians 4:11, ιδιοπραγμονειν, to affect rather quietness from the wicked world than acquaintance with it, and to pass through it with as little noise and notice as he can. Not but that God's faithful servants must cry aloud, and not spare, lifting up their voices like a trumpet, &c., Isaiah 58:1, and casting away the inverse trumpets of Furius Fulvus, which sounded a retreat, when they should have sounded an alarm. But this must be done with godly discretion. Zeal should eat us up, but not eat up our wisdom (saith one), nor should policy eat up our zeal. The apostles professed that they could not but speak the things that they had heard and seen; they must either vent or burst. And yet holy Paul (who was full of the spirit of judgment and of burning, Isa 4:4), though he preached at Ephesus (where he lived two years and more together) that they be no gods that are made with hands; yet he made no particular invective against their great goddess Diana, whereon they so impotently doted, Acts 19:26; Acts 19:37, He that hath a good mixture of zeal and prudence is like a ship well ballasted, that sails with a prosperous gale; but zeal without discretion is like fire on the chimney top; or like mettle in a blind horse; or the devil in the demoniac, that cast him sometimes into the fire, and sometimes into the water. What a storm of persecution raised Bishop Abdias in Persepolis by his intemperate zeal, not bridled with discretion; as the poets fable that Minerva put a golden bridle upon Pegasus, lest he should fly too fast? And it was some disadvantage to Paul, when in the council (though provoked and unjustly smitten) he called the high priest whited wall; he was glad to excuse it by his ignorance. We may not he too bold or too forward to speak in a good matter, to such as hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and abhor him that speaketh uprightly, Amos 5:10 .
For it is an evil time] By reason of an evil and adulterous generation, that make it so. It is a day of evil, as Psalms 41:1, that is, of difficulty and danger, to those that dare speak out: such as were Tiberius's times. That tiger laid hold with his teeth on all the brave spirits that could speak their minds fitly, and dared to do it freely. He put to death a certain poet, which in a tragedy had inveighed against Agamemnon; suspecting himself to be intended. Freedom of speech used by the Waldenses in blaming and reproving the vices, dissolute manners, life, and actions of great ones, made them looked upon and persecuted as heretics and enemies to the see apostolic, as Manichees, Catharists, what not? (Girardus).