Job 5:21

21. Scourge of the tongue The Targum refers this to the incantations of Balaam, but without reason. The word scourge, שׁושׂ , means whip, and is used here figuratively, with prime reference, perhaps, to the whip so frequently depicted on the monuments of Egypt. The same word, שׁושׂ , used of Satan’s rapid and destructive course and rendered “going to and fro,” means literally “whipping through,” Job 1:7. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 18:18) makes similar allusion to the tongue as a whip. Comp. Isaiah 28:15. Hitzig finds the secret of the figure used here in the resemblance of the sound of the tongue to that of a whip, or in their like flexibility a thought which Homer has, “flexible is the tongue of mortals.” Iliad, 20:248. It is worthy of remark, (Schlottmann calls it a certain irony,) that the very evil calumny from which Job is assured he should be hidden, in case he yields to the divine chastisement, is that with which the friends already threaten him.