The Rudder and the Ship (3:4)
With great wealth of imagination James proceeds to illustrate still further the power of the tongue over the rest of the body. The point is clear from the illustration of the bridle and the horse, but it is made still clearer by the other figures. The importance of the subject justifies this piling up of metaphors. “This combination of the horse’s bridle and the ship’s rudder as illustrative of the tongue is found” (Hort) in Philo and Plutarch. “The argument is à fortiori from the horse to the man, and still more from the ship to the man, so that the whole forms a climax, the point being throughout the same, namely, the smallness of the part to be controlled in order to have control over the whole” (Plummer).
The horse is an irrational creature and yet can be managed by the bridle. The ship has no mind at all and yet is moved “by a very small rudder,” “turned about,” “whither the impulse of the steersman willeth.” The “impulse” may be like “the rush of water” in Proverbs 21:1, which is there compared to the king’s heart, for God “turneth it whithersoever he will,” or like the rush or onset of the Gentiles and Jews to injure Paul in Iconium (Acts 14:5). Here it is the gentle pressure or touch of the hand of the steersman who guides the ship on its course straight ahead, as he decides (intention, purpose rather than mere will).[77]
The complete mastery of the steersman over the ship is accented by a comparison of the size of the ancient boats with horses. “Behold, even the ships” (probably we are to translate “even” rather than “also”), which, though they are so great (cf. 2 Cor. 1:10), “are yet turned about by the impulse of the steersman,” even when they are being driven by rough winds (if here again we translate “even” instead of “also”). One is reminded of the boat in which Jesus and the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee “now in the midst of the sea, distressed by the waves” (Matt. 14:24). The “rough winds” (cf. Prov. 27:16), “stiff winds” (Moffatt), were particularly dangerous for the small (from our standpoint) ships of the ancients. But the steersman could hold to his course even over a rough sea.
The point of James about the size of the ships would apply with far more force today, when modern leviathans of the deep plow the waters. There is now less peril from the stiff winds, but there is all the more ground for wonder that the tiny rudder can control at will the giant of the ocean. The steersman can drive the mighty monster straight upon an iceberg and sink it in a few minutes, as in the crash of the Titanic. Great as the ship is, the silent forces of nature are still greater. Man has not yet mastered all the powers of nature. But the ship, blind to its fate, responded to the will of the steersman, who dashed against the iceberg.
The lesson is only too obvious. One must watch the tongue if he is to avoid shipwreck. The tongue may dash the whole life in blind rage against God. The ship is one of the most beautiful of objects as it rides the waves in proud majesty. But more beautiful still is a life that is not marred by bad or bitter words. Plutarch (De Garrulitate, 10) says that speech beyond control is like a ship out at sea, broken loose from its moorings.