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Talking
“Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God” (Ecclesiastes 5:2).
Several years ago there was a political cartoon in a major US newspaper of one of the ex-presidents of the United States with his mouth wide open and footprints across his tongue! He had said things and made statements without thinking of the consequences, and it got him into a great deal of trouble. We sometimes say of a person like that, they put their foot in their mouth.
There is a lesson to be learned from this in the context of the above advice given to us in the Word of God by King Solomon. Consider before you speak. Think about what you will say before you say it. They say talk is cheap. However the after-effects can be very costly. Once our things have been said, they cannot be taken back. This is why we need to be “slow to speak” (James 1:19).
Another aspect of the verse teaches us not to make promises or commitments (vows, if you will) that you can’t keep or wish very much that you’d never made. This too can have devastating consequences we may regret for a long time.
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