Have you ever given much thought to the impact your words have? Nowadays, culture encourages us to speak the first thing that comes to mind, usually via social media. These comments, both positive and negative, can have tremendous influence and can make a powerful difference in someone else’s day. Our words are often emotional when sounding off immediately, and can affect and even hurt others. Unfortunately, we see that this can have significant negative consequences when we say something we should have thought about a little more first.
How did ancient Israel regard language and words? The Hebrew alphabet consists of 27 characters, 22 main letters and 5 special letters. The special letters, called soffits, have the same pronunciation as five other main letters. However, they are written differently and only used when it is the last character of a word.
Now consider this odd trivia fact. Did you know that the only verse in the Bible containing all 27 letters of the Hebrew alphabet is Zephaniah 3:8? Here is the amazing part. The very next verse (Zephaniah 3:9, CSB) reads, “For I will then restore pure speech to the peoples so that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with a single purpose.” Think that God doesn’t care about the words that come out of our mouths? Think again. Perhaps we should consider more carefully about the impact our words carry before shooting off that next email, text, or social post. Ponder that this week.