Proverbs 26:17-22

Grab a strange dog by the ears as you walk past and you will get bitten — and you will deserve it, because the fight was none of your business. Wading into other people's quarrels brings home trouble that was never assigned to you; it is your own cross, not your Master's. (Distinguish carefully: this is not a ban on godly peacemaking, and not a license to "suffer sin upon thy brother," Leviticus 19:17 — a word fitly spoken in season is good. But the impertinent love of meddling, of taking sides in fights that are not ours, only multiplies the bite, because now you are dealing not with one angry animal but with two angry people.) Study to be quiet and mind your own business.

Here is the man who wounds people and then laughs it off — "I was only joking." Solomon says he is exactly like a lunatic flinging firebrands, arrows, and death into a crowd, then grinning as if it were a game. The damage is real even when the intent was only mischief; a joke that humiliates a man, wounds his spirit, or harms his interests is no harmless joke. And note the crucial difference from the literal madman: the madman is not responsible — this man is, fully accountable to God and to the neighbor he "playfully" destroyed. He that sins in jest must repent in earnest, or his sin will be his ruin.

A fire dies when the wood runs out — and a quarrel dies when the gossip runs out. The busy tongue makes trouble where it doesn't find any, raking up old offenses to feed the flames, all to magnify that idol self by tearing down the name of someone else. So here is the practical cure for most strife, and it is not endless mediation: remove the fuel. Stop the talebearer — refuse to pass the story on, refuse to receive it, make him name his source — and the fire goes out for lack of wood. The man who turns an angry face to the gossip is carrying water to put out the fire.

Some people exist, it seems, to keep fires burning. As fresh coals revive the glowing embers and dry wood feeds the flame, so a quarrelsome man — with his determination to have the last word — keeps a conflict blazing that a single soft answer would have let die out. The whole thing may have started from one angry word or a contemptuous look; the contentious man makes sure it never stops. Ask yourself honestly which you tend to aim at: the sharp answer that stirs up anger, or the soft answer that turns it away (Proverbs 15:1)? No one who calls himself a Christian should earn the name "contentious man," for Christ is the Prince of Peace.

The gossip's words are the most dangerous wounds of all, because they go down deep — into the vitals, the inmost chambers of the heart — and lodge there. One quiet, whispered sentence can be a stab that kills a friendship or a reputation. They slip down so easily, like a tasty morsel, that even people who think they despise gossip find it has worked its way in. The old judge said he would hang the talebearer and the tale-hearer back to back — one by the tongue, the other by the ear — for there is no gossip without a willing listener.