How long will you torment me and crush me with words? – Job 19:2

Today's Scripture Reading (August 30, 2024): Job 19

According to nineteenth-century wisdom, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." It is common wisdom and maybe the best example of wisdom that is simply wrong. We wish this wisdom were true, but it just isn't. Sticks and stones create wounds that will eventually heal, but the names we are called and the words and stories that are told about us leave wounds that might never heal. Most of us bear the wounds of the names someone called us that have never healed. I know I do. All of the people who have doubted me and called me names have left scars on my being, and it is surprising how quickly adverse events can open up those wounds that have never healed in my inner being.

The Book of Sirach, a Hebrew Book of Wisdom written by the scribe Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira between 196 and 179 B.C.E., tells us the truth we know. "The blow of a whip raises a welt, but a blow of the tongue crushes the bones" (Sirach 28:17). Two thousand years before the first mention of this piece of common wisdom, this scribe knew the truth: words are dangerous, and they leave a kind of hurt that may never heal.

And more than 2000 years before Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira taught about the difference between the blow of a whip and the blow of the tongue, Job spoke in agreement with the wisdom author. Here, Job admits that it is not sticks and stones that have crushed him, nor even the accusations of his enemies that have hurt him. It was the comments of his friends that have left him a wounded man. Charles Spurgeon says:

They struck at him with their hard words, as if they were breaking stones on the roadside. We ought to be very careful what we say to those who are suffering affliction and trial, for a word, though it seems to be a very little thing, will often cut far more deeply and wound far more terribly than a razor would." (Charles Spurgeon)

Dwight L. Moody agreed and added this comment to the church of his day. This teaching still applies to our contemporary church, which seems to prioritize orthodoxy over love.

The church has become very jealous about men being unsound in the faith. If a man becomes unsound in the faith, they draw their ecclesiastical swords and cut at him. But he may be ever so unsound in love, and they don't say anything" (D.L. Moody).

It is time that we started to stress what Jesus taught was Important. It is time to love the people around us and to leave the name-calling and unflattering descriptions far behind us.

 Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Job 20