Studies in the Epistle of James

by A. T. Robertson

Taming of Wild Beasts (3:7 f.)

James recurs to the beasts (cf. horse and bridle) for a broader discussion. The tongue is unbridled all too often and is the most unmanageable of wild animals. He had just said that the tongue is set on fire of hell. “The fact that the tongue is the one thing that defies man’s power to control it is a sign that there is something satanic in its bitterness” (Mayor). He uses the language of Oriental exaggeration in giving further proof of his strong statement, a justifiable hyperbole: “For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind.” “The art of taming is no new thing, but has belonged to the human race from the first” (Mayor).

It is perhaps not strictly true that every conceivable animal has been subjected by man, but no one in the light of the past and the present can say that any animal is untamable. It is now a common enough thing to see in a wild animal show performing tigers, leopards, lions, elephants, monkeys, dogs, horses, parrots, seals, bears, and even serpents. It is not merely that wild animals may be domesticated (cf. the wolf and the dog), like the zebra and the wild turkey (America’s contribution to the world’s barnyard), but they may be taught to do acts and tricks that show rudimentary reasoning powers. The eye of man can subdue the lion, the tiger, and the serpent as Jesus subdued the untamable demoniac (Mark 5:4), “and no man had strength to tame him.” Man has proved his kingship over the other creatures as God gave him dominion (Gen. 1:26). In many cases animals have become so domesticated that they no longer feel at home elsewhere.

Man is proud of his lordship over beast and bird and over the forces of nature like wind and wave and electricity. Man can swim like a fish, can run like a deer, and can now even fly like a bird in the airplane with its artificial wings. He can talk without wires with unseen persons over thousands of miles. He can speed over land and sea like the wind. He can send a message around the earth with the swiftness of light.

But he cannot control his own tongue. “But the tongue can no man tame.” Here is the language of helplessness, as in the case of the demoniac in Mark 5:4. Strictly speaking, of course, the tongue is merely the organ of speech, and speech is under the control of the mind. By a bold figure James almost personifies the tongue as a separate personality. “It combines the ferocity of the tiger and the mockery of the ape with the subtlety and venom of the serpent” (Plummer). It is thus the very chimera of wild beasts!

This is the picture of the tongue in its natural state, the tongue of the unregenerate man. The Spirit of God can cleanse a man’s mouth of profanity and unclean speech. “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile” (Psalm 34:13). Paul puts up the bars: “Nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, or jesting, which are not befitting” (Eph. 5:4). Once more he says: “Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth” (4:29). Surely, if one has such an untamable little animal in his mouth as the tongue, he needs to watch it with ceaseless care. The evil of the tongue echoes and re-echoes through a community and often through the ages. The evil slander can never be stopped. The lie is fleet of foot and eludes truth in a race.

“It is a restless evil,” “plague of disorder that it is” (Moffatt), “a disorderly evil” (Hort), iniquitum malum (Vulgate). It is unstable and unreliable, inconsistent and quixotic. It can never be trusted to the full. It will turn on one when off guard, like the lion when the keeper turns his eye away. It can be brought under no rules that will work.

“It is full of deadly poison.” It is “death-bringing” poison like the poison of asps under their lips (Psalm 140:3). “Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear” (Psalm 58:4). The poison of the serpent is deposited in a little pocket under the mouth. So the tongue is charged with the venom of hate, as the serpent with poison. The hiss of the serpent and the hiss of the goose are often reproduced in the sibilant tongue of slander.