James 3:5

ἡ γλῶσσα …; For this idea of the independent action of a member of the body taken as though personality were attached to it see Matthew 5:29-30; Matthew 15:19; it is quite in the Hebrew style, cf. in the O.T. the same thing in connection with anthropomorphic expressions. Moffatt (Expository Times, xiv. p. 568) draws attention to Plutarch's essay, De Garrulitate, 10, where the union of similar nautical and igneous metaphors (as in James 3:4-6) is found; “the moralist speaks first of speech as beyond control once it is uttered, like a ship which has broken loose from its anchorage. But in the following sentence, he comes nearer to the idea of James by quoting from a fragment of Euripides these lines:

Μικροῦ γὰρ ἐκ λαμπτῆρος Ἰδαῖον λέπας Πρήσειεν ἄν τις · καὶ πρὸς ἄνδρʼ εἰπὼν ἕνα,

Πύθοιντʼ ἂν ἀστοὶ πάντες.”

καὶ μεγάλα αὐχεῖ : ἅπ. λεγ. in N.T.; the same would apply to the alternative reading (see critical note above) μεγαλαυχεῖ. In Sir 48:18 we have, καὶ ἐμεγαλαύχησεν ὑπερηφανίᾳ αὐτοῦ. Mayor most truly remarks: “There is no idea of vain boasting, the whole argument turns upon the reality of the power which the tongue possesses”; this fully bears out what has been implied above, that this section has for its object the attempt to pacify the bitterness which had arisen in certain Synagogues of the Diaspora owing to controversies aroused by the harangues of various “teachers”. ἰδοὺ ἡλίκον πῦρ ἡλίκην ὕλην ἀνάπτει : at the risk of being charged with fancifulness the surmise may be permitted as to whether this picture was not suggested by the sight of an excited audience in some place of meeting; when an Eastern audience has been aroused to a high pitch, the noise of tongues, and gesticulation of the arms occasioned by the discussion following upon the oration which has been delivered, might most aptly be compared to a forest fire; the tongue of one speaker has set ablaze all the inflammable material which controversy brings into being. The possibility that the writer had something of this kind in his mind should not be altogether excluded. ἀνάπτει occurs in the N.T. elsewhere only in Luke 12:49; Taylor (quoted by Mayor) says: “On fires kindled by the tongue see Midr. Rabb. on Lev. (Leviticus 14:2) where the words are almost the same as those in St. James, quanta incendia lingua excitat! ”