A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
The tongue of the wise commends knowledge,
but the mouths of fools pour out folly.
The eyes of the Lord are in every place,
keeping watch on the evil and the good.Proverbs 15:1-3
One commentator refers us to Judges 8:1-3 for a good example of how a soft answer takes the heat out of a critical situation. It is only too true that a harsh word (lb, RSV) can exacerbate an already tense and potentially explosive time of crisis - and, alas, if the truth be told, such a word is often deliberately spoken in the full knowledge that it will make things worse. A right attitude here requires us to have our personal feelings under strict control and in complete subjection, otherwise, we will allow the situation to dictate what our feelings will be, instead of the word and will of God. In 2, it is not so much a question of saying little or much, but of speaking advisedly or unadvisedly. There is responsible utterance. One is reminded of Ecclesiastes 3:7, 'there is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak'. The wise man knows how to speak with profit, and when. There is an interesting reference in 2 Chronicles 16:9 which echoes the statement in 3, and gives an illustration of what it means. The Lord's eyes behold the evil and the good in every situation, and He acts accordingly: if people have done evilly and foolishly, He adopts a certain attitude, and if they have done wisely and well, in a spirit of reliance on Him, He adopts a certain attitude towards them. This is a word of immense encouragement, if we are in the will of God, because it tells us that God sees us, sees our situation, sees our problem and our difficulty, and His heart is toward us. We recall how Hagar in the wilderness came to this amazed consciousness 'Thou God seest me'. These words are an immense comfort or an enormous terror, depending on whether we are in His will or out of it.