STICKING OUT YOUR TONGUE IS NOT CUTE

 

Sticking out your tongue is NOT cute. It is a loathsome heathen custom that mocks God and his people.

 

Isaiah 57:4 Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood.

 

“Isaiah 57:4
Against whom do ye sport yourselves? - The word here rendered ‘sport’ (??? ?a?nag) means properly “to live delicately and tenderly”; then “to rejoice, to take pleasure or delight.” Here, however, it is evidently used in the sense of to sport oneself over anyone, that is, to deride; and the idea is, probably, that they made a sport or mockery of God, and of the institutions of religion. The prophet asks, with deep indignation and emotion, against whom they did this. Were they aware of the majesty and glory of that Being whom they thus derided?


Against whom make yea wide mouth? - That is, in derision or contempt Psa_35:21 : ‘Yea, they opened their mouth wide against me.’ And draw out the tongue? - Lowth, ‘Loll the tongue;’ or, as we would say, ‘run out the tongue.’ Perhaps it was done with a rapid motion, as in mockery of the true prophets when they delivered the message of God (compare 2Ch_36:16). Contempt was sometimes shown also by protruding the lips Psa_22:7 :

 

‘They shoot out the lip;’ and also by gaping upon a person Psa_22:13; ‘They gaped upon me with their mouths.’


Are ye not children of transgression? - That is, in view of the fact that you make a sport of sacred things, and deride the laws and the prophets of God.
A seed of false-hood - A generation that is unfaithful to God and to his cause.” Barnes

 

Donna Kupp