ABSTRACT
By “whisperer” the Wise Man means the backbiter, the collector and distributer of defamatory gossip. He is thinking of the social bravo who, using words for his dagger, stabs his victim in the back. “Whisperer” is a good name for such stealthy cowards. This sort of sinner has existed since history began, so fascinating is detraction for the speaker—and the listener too. The Bible is full of warnings against it. More than twenty centuries separate Ben Sira’s world from ours; but it cannot be said that we are more free from the sin he denounced than were the men of his time. The tongue is as unruly a member as ever it was. A mere word lightly spoken, without malice or any evil intent, simply to fill up an empty moment or two, and the mental attitude of one human being to another is radically and irreparably changed for the worse.
