Just the right words

How many “word” proverbs can you call to mind?

“A word to the wise …”

“You have the last word.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

Proverbs has a lot to say about the subject:

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold.”

“The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters.”

And this severe warning from Christ should give us all pause: “On the day of judgment people will give an account for every careless word they speak.”

Writers have no excuse for careless words. When paper was scarce and printing done by hand, written words were almost priceless. Today, anything from antiquity, even a grocery list, is a museum piece. But “when words are many, transgression is not lacking” (Proverbs 10:19), and writers are as careless with their ink as speakers with their face time. Even worse, large language models like GPT-6, Claude, and Gemini steal the words from writers and fling them around like confetti. Right now, AI bots are busily scraping words from the internet to churn out ever-more-lifelike imitations of human speech. Transgression has a field day.

One recent scam targets authors in particular. Consider someone like me who recently published a book with three collaborators. All four of us received identical emails beginning, “I didn’t sit down today intending to write an author. Then I came across [book title].” The sender claimed to love the book, piling accolade upon accolade until coming to “That’s why I’m reaching out.”

Christian author Tim Challies has received several of these emails and warned his peers about them early in December. The pitch is deliberately vague but hints that the sender has contacts and can introduce the book to a larger audience—possibly even translate it for global sales. There’s no mention of specific fees or plans; no company, agency, or organization. Just click a link or hit “Reply,” and somebody will be at the other end to offer services for hire. The praise that sounded authentic was scraped (there’s that ugly-sounding verb again) from publisher copy and positive reviews.

Publishers have begun sending cautionary emails to all their authors: Beware of empty words, beartrap words, AI-generated words, words, words.

The proliferation of words on the internet has moved more writers to post assurances that their words are original and organic. Small comfort, if their voices are drowning in the rising tide of fakery.

But return with me to ca. 500 B.C., and a trembling prophet confronted by the Lord: “Before you were in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you … a prophet to the nations.” Like Moses, Jeremiah protested: “I do not know how to speak!” But God never commissioned without provision. “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth, saying, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.’” With the words came the power “to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

It must have seemed like a dubious honor at times, to a reluctant prophet who would be ignored, mocked, kidnapped, and thrown into a pit. Yet the power given to Jeremiah was the same as that given to Moses, Elijah, Simon Peter, and the other apostles. “I have put my words in your mouth,” to “bind and lose.” Those men bore the words of God like a sword and spoke His truth and His will as if the act of speaking would bring to pass what they said.

If that sounds like a speculation too far, remember that God has always acted by speaking. His words brought the universe out of nothing. When He gave those words to the prophets, they were instruction, invitation, warning, endearment—but also the very shape of things to come.

Don’t we have the same? “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation.” The proclamation is the power. The words are the fulfillment. Jeremiah received the words of God into his mouth, but haven’t we received the words of Scripture—approximately 757,500 of them—into our hands? It “is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14).

And we can speak it. In a vast landscape of wasted words, those still have power, if we believe and cherish them.