I doubt that when David wrote these words he could have imagined a world when words could be "sharpened like swords" like today. When David lived, communicating outside of your city was hard enough- imagine communicating across the world! Technology has connected the far reaches of the globe, for good and for ill. One of the ills is that the situation David responds to in this psalm is far more prevalent (and easier) today. Just think about how easy it is for a person to get an audience for hate speech. It happens on blogs, youtube channels, facebook groups, twitter accounts, chain e-mails, pop-up advertising, and that's just the stuff that anyone can get started. Television shows, newspaper columns, magazine articles and others can be accessed and used by people of higher communication skills to let their conspiracy of words be released to millions of people in some circumstances.
I have wondered from time to time what God must think of the toxic environment of our world. I shudder to think about God's perspective on our words. Having once been the recipient of word-hate online, I can't imagine that similar situations happen every day. People have even lost their lives in the sweeping tide of bullying and verbal hate. The end of this passage gets ominous when David describes that God will personally end the hatred and bring release to the hated. And so when we are victims of hate, we can rest in God and lean on the marvelous works of God. But when we participate in the hate, we can turn back to God and let our tongues "unsharpen" a bit. Words, like just about everything else in life, are impossible to erase. Let us go into our day watching for opportunities to increase the peace with our words and actions.
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