The Bird in the Bedchamber

Four programs came across this desk last week, from channels that agree with each other on almost nothing. Each one held up something a person had written in private.

A teacher’s assistant lost a lesson plan when a student shut her laptop. She sent a bitter joke about him to three friends, on a private story that only those three could see. None of the three reported her. A machine read it anyway, flagged it, and sent it to federal agents the same day. She spent the night in jail.

A public health official kept a diary on a government computer. Pages of it were read aloud on two separate programs, in the voice a man uses when he is quoting a teenage girl.

An old claim resurfaced that a president was once handled with a recording of a phone call he made from an aircraft. The recording was never released. It did not have to be.

And a widow’s love letters, written to her by her husband before he was killed, were printed and mailed out as fundraising material. He wrote them for one reader.

Not one of those four people published anything. All four of them were read by millions.

Nobody Agreed on Which One Was Wrong

The people who called the arrest an outrage laughed all the way through the diary.

The people who wanted the diary read out loud thought the letters should have been left alone.

Each side guarded its own man’s private words. Each side read the other man’s out loud.

That is two sets of scales in one week.

“Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to Yahuah.” — Proverbs 20:10

A man carrying two weights is not being careless. He is choosing which one to use.

Solomon Already Wrote It Down

“Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.” — Ecclesiastes 10:20

Read what he takes for granted. Not that a man might be overheard. That he will be.

The bedchamber is the most closed room in the house. A man is alone there, with the door shut, and the counsel is still do not say it. Solomon does not tell him to lower his voice or check the hallway. He tells him the words will travel, and leaves it there.

For three thousand years men read that as plain advice. Watch your mouth. Somebody might be listening.

Last week nobody was listening. A machine was already sitting inside a message that three friends could open, and it read the words itself.

The bird was never a warning about palaces. It was a description of the world.

The Part That Was Not About the Government

“That which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.” — Luke 12:3

Yahushua said that to His own men. He was talking about their own words.

He was not warning them that a king was listening. He was telling them about a day that is coming.

“The eyes of Yahuah are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” — Proverbs 15:3

The bird is only a copy. Yahuah was in the bedchamber first, and He has been in every one since.

So a man who says nothing in the dark that he would not say in the light has nothing to fear from a bird.

Four people learned last week what was in their private words.

The rest of us have not been read yet.