Accuse not a servant unto his master, lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty.
Ver. 10. Accuse not a servant unto his master.] Unless it be in an ordinance, for the benefit of both. Much less may we falsely accuse wives to their husbands - as Stephen Gardiner and other courtparasites did King Henry VIII his wives to him of adultery, heresy, conspiracy, &c.; children to their parents - as the Jesuits, the Pope's bloodhounds, did Charles, eldest son of Philip, King of Spain, for suspicion of heresy, whereupon he was murdered by the cruel Inquisition; one friend to another; a sin that David could not endure; Psa 101:5 and Christ, the Son of David, as deeply disliked it in the Pharisees, those mischief makers, that by accusing his disciples to him one while, and him to his disciples another while, sought to make a breach in his family, by setting off the one from the other.
Lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty.] Lest to cry quittance with thee he rip up thy faults, such as it will be for thy shame, -
“Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.”
He that speaketh what he should not, shall hear of what he would not. Put them in mind to speak evil of no man falsely and rashly, without cause and necessity. And why? "For we ourselves also" - even I Paul, and thou Titus - "were sometimes foolish, disobedient," &c., Tit 3:1-3 and may haply hear of it to our shame and sorrow, if we irritate others thereunto by way of recrimination.