Ecclesiastes 10:20

Curse not the king, no not in thy thought The words paint, as from a painful experience, the all-pervading espionage, which, as in the delatoresof the Roman Empire, associates itself naturally with the police of a despotic government. The wise man must recognise that espionage as a fact and gives his counsel accordingly, but it is not the less clear that the counsel itself conveys, in its grave irony, a condemnation of the practice. It may be noted that the addition of "curse not the rich" makes the irony clearer, and takes the maxim out of the hands of those who would read in it the serious condemnation of all independence of thought and speech in face of the "right divine of kings to govern wrong." For the purposes of the teacher, in the maxims in which the irony of indignation veils itself in the garb of a servile prudence, the rich man and the king stand on the same level.

in thy bedchamber This is, as in 2 Kings 6:12, like the "closet" of Matthew 6:6, proverbial for the extremest retirement.

a bird of the air shall carry the voice The figure is so natural, answering to the "walls have ears" of the Rabbinic, German, English proverbs, that any more special reference scarcely need to be sought for, but it is interesting to note the close parallel presented by the familiar Greek proverb of "the cranes of Ibycos." For the reader who does not know the story it may be well to tell it. Ibycos was a lyric poet of Rhegium, circ. b.c. 540. He was murdered by robbers near Corinth and, as he died, called on a flock of cranes that chanced to fly over him, to avenge his death. His murderers went with their plunder to Corinth, and mingled with the crowd in the theatre. It chanced that the cranes appeared and hovered over the heads of the spectators, and one of the murderers betrayed himself by the terror-stricken cry "Behold the avengers of Ibycos!" (Suidas Ἴβυκος. Apollon. Sidon in the Anthol. Graec. B. vii. 745, ed. Tauchnitz). Suggestive parallels are also found in Greek comedy.

οὐδεὶς οἰδεν τὸν θησαυρὸν τὸν ἐμὸν

πλὴν εἴ τις ἄρʼ ὄρνις.

"No one knows of my treasure, save, it may be, a bird."

Aristoph. Birds, 575.

ἡ κορώνη μοὶ πάλαι

ἄνω τι φράζει.

"Long since the raven tells me from on high."

Aristoph. Birds, 50.

Possibly, however, the words may refer to the employment of carrier pigeons in the police espionage of despots. Their use goes back to a remote antiquity and is at least as old as Anacreon's "Ode to a pigeon."

The pigeon speaks:

Ἐγὼ δʼ Ανακρέοντι

Διακονῶ τοσαῦτα,

Καὶ νῦν ὁρᾶς ἐκείνου

Ἐπιστολὰς κομίζω.

"Now I render service due

To Anacreon, Master true,

And I bear his billets-doux."

Frequently they were employed to keep up communication between generals, as in the case of Brutus and Hirtius at the battle of Mutina. "What availed it," says Pliny, in words that coincide almost verbally with the text (Hist. Nat.x. 37), "that nets were stretched across the river while the messenger was cleaving the air" (" per cœlum eunte nuntio").