Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better.
Ver. 11. Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment.] It is for want of wisdom that the babbler, or tongue master (as the original hath it), is nothing better than the most poisonous serpent; nay, in some respects, worse; for one serpent stings not another, as backbiters do their best friends. And whereas serpents may be charmed, or their poison kept from the vitals, contra sycophantae morsum non est remedium, as the proverb hath it, there is no help to be had for the biting of a sycophant: his tongue is "full of deadly poison," saith St James. Jam 3:8 Again, serpents usually hiss and give warning (though the Septuagint here read non in sibilo, the Vulgate, in silentio, in silence and without hissing, for without enchantment), so doth not the slanderer and detractor. He is a silent serpent, and like the dogs of Congo, which bite, but bark not. a And therefore, as all men hate a serpent and flee from the sight of it, so will wise men shun the society of a slanderer. And as any one abhors to be like to that old serpent the devil, so let him eschew this evil.
a Purchas's Pilgrim.