AS A TALEBEARER

The tendency to communicate scandalous gossip is almost as old as time, as when Ham ‘saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren’, Gen. 9. 22.

The word ‘talebearer’ is used six times in the King James Version of the Holy Scriptures. On three of these occasions the Hebrew word carries the idea of slander, and the remaining ref­erences use a word that has the idea of whispering. Elsewhere, that same word is translated ‘whisperer’; ‘a whisperer separ- ateth chief friends’, Prov. 16. 28. You can almost see him muttering in low tones behind the back of his hand, and a long-standing friendship is destroyed!

Technology has made it unnecessary for peddlers of gossip to go ‘up and down as a talebearer’. Modern ‘tattlers’ and ‘busy- bodies’ do not need to go to the effort of ‘wandering about from house to house’, 1 Tim. 5. 13. For them, and for all with an appe­tite for the sensational, the telephone, the text message, and the e-mail have created a paradise. Beware! God forbids that pro­pensity for character assassination; it is low and mean. In a poem, Henry Durbanville urged caution when you are tempted to circulate the gossip that has come your way. Make it pass through what he called ‘three gates of gold’.

Three narrow gates: first, Is it true? Then, Is it needful? In your mind Give truthful answer. And the next is last and narrowest - Is it kind?

The talebearer is in contrast to the person who ‘is of a faithful spirit’, Prov. 11. 13. Which would you rather be? The talebearer’s words are ‘as wounds’, 18. 8. They wound the person who is scandalized. They wound the recipient of the information, sad­dening him if he is noble, or filling him with unholy glee if he is base. They wound the purveyor of the news, further debasing his character, for they are self-inflicted wounds according to Young’s Literal Translation. They wound a wider circle of people for they are fuel for the flames of strife, Prov. 26. 20. How shame­ful to go about as a talebearer, Prov. 20. 19. Be like Him who ‘went about doing good’, Acts 10. 38.