VIII The Tongues of Teachers
James carries on the discussion of “slow to speak” (1:19). He has just been writing about idle faith in 2:14-26, and now he proceeds (Plummer) to expound the peril of the idle word, “wrong speech after wrong action” (Hort). Indeed, in 1:26 he has already mentioned the failure to bridle the tongue as a sure sign of vain religion. Now he expands the matter in a remarkable paragraph.
The transition is thus not so abrupt as at first seems to be the case, and apparently from the first he planned this discussion of the tongue. Probably it comes here (Plummer) because controversies about faith and works were already rife. Here James speaks “against those who substitute words for works” (Plummer), a rather large class. “In noble uprightness, he values only the strict practice of concrete duties, and hates talk” (Reuss), if it is only talk. James has the gift of condensation. He can write on talk without taking twenty volumes, like Carlyle, to prove that if speech is silvern, silence is golden (Plummer). The “overvaluation of theory as compared with practice” (Mayor) condemned in chapter II is still present with James as he discusses the tongue.