Many years ago, I briefly went to church with a person who had a gift for using words to get folks upset. This person could say a few choice sentences and make you feel defensive or belittled. They could phrase compliments in such a way that you felt worse for having received them.
The worst was when they decided to be angry, in which case they used their words to bludgeon anyone who was unlucky enough to cross them. Not surprisingly, this individual quickly pushed people to one of two extremes. Folks either associated with them and were constantly angry at whoever this person decided to be angry at or they avoided this person at all costs. I suspect most of us know people who, with everything they say, make those around them miserable.
The Bible has an interesting phrase to describe this type of person: “Their mouths are an open grave.” The phrase appears several times in different parts of the Bible, meaning it was probably common in ancient Israel. In our setting, this sounds like a reference to a hole in the ground, but Israel was a mountainous region where folks weren’t usually buried underground. Instead, they were placed in caves, usually carved in the side of a mountain.
The mouth of the cave would be covered with a boulder and left closed for at least a year, so as to contain the unpleasant things that happen when a body decomposes. So if the Bible compares folks who use their words to hurt others as though they’re an open grave, it means their words are noxious and most folks avoid them at all costs. There are some interesting things to be learned from this metaphor.
First, exposure to an open grave could make you physically ill. There is a similar truth about folks who are verbally abusive: they can make us spiritually ill. We can start to believe their lies and become confused about what is true and what isn’t. I’ve met folks who believed terrible lies about themselves because they were told by a loved one that they were stupid, mean, ugly, worthless, or some other demeaning thing. Hearing those kinds of things for too long can be like breathing in foul air. Eventually, it infects you and makes you sick.
Second, to the ancient Jewish people exposure to a dead person made you unclean. There were elaborate rituals for cleaning yourself after such an encounter and it was taken very seriously by people at the time. The same can be true of listening to folks who have nothing but rotten things to say.
They can make our minds unclean by driving us to be constantly angry or convincing us to engage in behavior we know is wrong. It’s easy to see this sort of thing on social media, where a great deal of what folks post is aimed at getting us angry about one thing or another. Or worse, aimed at convincing you that things that are wrong are right. Taking advice or counsel from the wrong person can leave our thinking messed up.
A final thing that is worth learning from the way the Bible describes folks who use words recklessly is that, like an open grave, they stink. Constantly hearing folks tear down or attack gets old pretty quick, especially if its aimed at you. We want to avoid these people because they make everyone miserable.
With the person I went to church with, I knew they were toxic, but I continued to try to work around their negativity for over a year. It was a miserable year.
Eventually, I realized that it was necessary to cut them out of my life, because it makes no sense to expose yourself to an open grave. The best advice I can offer anyone who finds themselves dealing with a person whose “mouths are an open grave” is to avoid them as best you can. If you can’t avoid them, don’t take their words into yourself. Don’t believe them or take them seriously.
