English Standard Version ESV
The Message Bible MSG
1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
1
Don't be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards.
2 For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.
2
And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you'd have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.
3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.
3
A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse.
4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.
4
A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds.
5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!
5
A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything - or destroy it!
6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
6
A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.
7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind,
7
This is scary: You can tame a tiger,
8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
8
but you can't tame a tongue - it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer.
9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
9
With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image.
10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
10
Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?
11
A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it?
12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.
12
Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?
The English Standard Version is published with the permission of Good News Publishers.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.