Death and life [are] in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Ver. 21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue.] That best and worst member of the body, as Bias told Amasis, king of Egypt; a an "unruly evil set on fire of hell," saith St James of an ill tongue - as contrarily a good one is fired with zeal by the Holy Ghost. Act 2:2-4 Fire, we know, is a good servant, but an ill lord; if it get above us once, there is no dealing with it. Hence it is, that as the careful householder lays a strict charge upon his children and servants to look well to their fire, so doth Solomon give often warning to have a care of the tongue. "For by thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condenmed," saith a greater than Solomon. Mat 12:37 The Arabians have a proverb, ‘Take heed that thy tongue cut not thy throat.' b A word and a pest grow upon the same root in the Hebrew; to shew, saith one, that an evil tongue hath the pestilence in it. It spits up and down the room, as the serpent Dipsas, or as a candle, whose tallow is mixed with brine.
a Plutarch.
b Cave ne feriat lingua tua collum tuum. - Scalig.