Proverb 17:7-8
Excessive speech is not becoming for a fool;
how much less are lies for a ruler!
A bribe works like a charm for the one who offers it;
in whatever he does he succeeds.
I’d venture a guess that you’ve heard that phrase before. Like putting lipstick on a pig. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what it means. A pig might not be able to figure it out, but we can. You can do stuff to try to make something appear pretty even though it’s ugly, but it’s still going to be ugly. You can put lipstick on a pig, a bow on it’s tail, slather it in perfume and put a grill in it’s teeth – but it’s still going to be a pig.
Fools do the same thing with their speech. They use a lot of words to try to make up for the fact that they’re fools. They think that the more they talk, the smarter they sound. If they can carry a conversation for a long time, then obviously they are the smarter ones in the conversation. If they do 95% of the talking, they’re the smarter ones.
If you find yourself in many conversations where you do the majority of the speaking, you should probably do less talking and more listening. If you don’t feel very wise, you should probably do a lot more listening than you do speaking. If you are trying to impress someone, you have already crossed the line. You don’t impress people with your words, you impress people by being. The point is, talking too much is almost never a good thing. If you talk to much, you’re on your way to being a fool.
Excessive speech is not becoming for a fool. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. Or a bow-tie on a cow.
