8 but the tongue can no one among men tame; [it is] an unsettled evil, full of death-bringing poison.
their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; asps' poison [is] under their lips:
They sharpen their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips. Selah.
Smooth were the milky [words] of his mouth, but his heart was war; his words were softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords.
My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down [among] them that breathe out flames, the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.
If the serpent bite before enchantment, then the charmer hath no advantage.
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: [they are] like the deaf adder which stoppeth her ear;
Their wine is the poison of dragons, And the cruel venom of vipers.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on James 3
Commentary on James 3 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 3
The apostle here reproves ambition, and an arrogant magisterial tongue; and shows the duty and advantage of bridling it because of its power to do mischief. Those who profess religion ought especially to govern their tongues (v. 1-12). True wisdom makes men meek, and avoiders of strife and envy: and hereby it may easily be distinguished from a wisdom that is earthly and hypocritical (v. 13-18).
Jam 3:1-12
The foregoing chapter shows how unprofitable and dead faith is without works. It is plainly intimated by what this chapter first goes upon that such a faith is, however, apt to make men conceited and magisterial in their tempers and their talk. Those who set up faith in the manner the former chapter condemns are most apt to run into those sins of the tongue which this chapter condemns. And indeed the best need to be cautioned against a dictating, censorious, mischievous use of their tongues. We are therefore taught,
Jam 3:13-18
As the sins before condemned arise from an affectation of being thought more wise than others, and being endued with more knowledge than they, so the apostle in these verses shows the difference between men's pretending to be wise and their being really so, and between the wisdom which is from beneath (from earth or hell) and that which is from above.