opens his mouth and puts his foot in it (which means a good many of us), to be careful how we talk. ‘Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD,’ prayed the psalmist,18 ‘keep watch over the door of my lips!’ It is more likely to be a rather different lesson, which will be intensified for us as Judges proceeds: namely, that how the Lord uses his servants in public is not necessarily related to what he knows them to be in private. This is not meant to be a cosy excuse (‘He obviously uses my gifts, so I don’t