The Tongue as the Beginning of Sin and Virtue

Not because 'righteousness has persecuted me' Ps 22:19, but do not forsake me, do not become distant from me. God forsakes someone when they are worthy to suffer grievous things. I do not say this to mean that He tests them with grievous things; He is not not-forsaking, but when one, having grievous things, is defeated and cast down, then You do not forsake me, if You do not depart from me. I have clung to You; I have become one spirit toward You. When one clings to the Lord, and the Lord to him. 'My soul has clung to You behind You' Ps 63:8.

Cry out for my help, O Lord of my salvation Ps 27:7. You stand away from me if I sin, not if I am hated unjustly, nor even if some magnify themselves against me. And You are Lord and God of my salvation. But salvation does not touch the flesh, nor is it found regarding external things, but regarding the soul itself. This is the said eternal salvation; for it 'became'—the Christ, clearly—'eternal salvation to all those obeying Him.' The flesh's 'eternal salvation', which doctors bring to it, or that which a pilot saves for those sailing, is not eternal; for these will soon die again. But the salvation of God is eternal; He is their salvation.

ways so as not to sin in my tongue. This is one of the Psalms. In Ezra and in the Book of the Remaining, there is a memory of each name of those being submitted. And this, then, is one of them, or perhaps he himself composed the psalm, or received it from David and proclaimed it. And it is the work of the Psalms to say their psalms, both those they themselves composed and those others arranged.

This, then, is a victory song. Often the sinner is troubled by these things, but after conquering and trampling him and taking him under hand, the psalmist sends back the song; for no one sings a victory song while still warring and being warred against, but in the having conquered. Likewise, Moses and all the Jewish multitude did not say a victory song when they were against Pharaoh, but when they saw him become a drowning man: 'Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously He has been glorified; He has cast horse and rider into the sea' Ex 15:1. When the horse and its rider were cast into the sea, and Pharaoh's chariots and the power of the...

God cast the Red Sea into the sea, and then a victorious song was appropriately sent up. And David says in the seventy-first psalm: 'In the day when he rescued him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, then he said: I will love you, O Lord my strength' (Ps 71:5), and all the rest which the song contains. It is a prayer before the war and in the war, but a victorious hymn and song after the destruction of the war, after capturing the enemies.

I said: 'I will guard my ways so as not to sin in my tongue' (Ps 34:13). For almost every practical sin has its beginning in the word. Regarding the young man whom the prostitute—who is personified in the proverbs, that is, being a woman or a false glory or a deception starting from words—is able to ensnare: for it is said, 'She led him astray with much intercourse' or enticement, and 'with the nooses through the lips she hollowed him out' (Prov 2:3/7). And behold, the word has become the beginning of sin. And the elders, indeed, those remaining according to Sophronius, started a word toward her.

If, therefore, someone does not sin in the tongue, he guards the ways well; for he said that the beginning of these ways is the word. And from the opposite of all good works, the word is the beginning. But he does not speak only about those ways; he added, 'so as not to sin in my tongue' (Ps 34:13). Yet sinning in the tongue is not the same as saying, 'My tongue will meditate on your righteousness' (Ps 119:9). 'The beginning of your words is truth' (Ps 119:160). The cause of saying your words is your truth; I will make this manifest if I know it. Therefore, upon the virtues and the well-flowing ways, truth is the beginning, the cause. But upon the forbidden ways, from which it is necessary to guard oneself and from which it is proper to turn away, the word is the beginning, as has already been said.

I set a guard upon my mouth (Ps 34:13). Remember how he said 'not to sin in the tongue': 'I set a guard upon my mouth.' Since 'from the words someone is justified and from his words he is condemned' (Matt 12:37), it is necessary for the mouth to place a guard, so that I may say the good things and not the bad, that we may speak the profitable things and be silent about the harmful ones; for no one is able at once to bring forth words that both justify and condemn. Something like this is said with an enigma in the proverbs: 'Death and life are in the hand of the tongue' (Prov 18:21). And the 'hand' of the 'tongue' is the word.