How Do I Respond When Others Talk About Me Behind My Back?

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Have you ever overheard someone say something nasty about you?

You walked by their cubicle at work, read that email you weren’t supposed to be CC’d in, or heard from someone else what your “friend” said about you. Your face flushes with anger, and you can’t wait to speak to them, say something sarcastic, or better yet, give them the cold shoulder until they fess up. If this is where you’re at today, Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 is just the passage you need.

Here, the preacher of Ecclesiastes says, ²¹ “Don’t pay attention to everything people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you, ²² for in your heart you know that many times you yourself have cursed others.” These verses highlight the previous verse, which says, “There is certainly no one righteous on the earth who does good and never sins.”

As Jerry Shepherd writes, these verses “call appropriate attention to the all–too-hasty reaction of condemning others for things you have done yourself, or toward which you have a tendency but perhaps lack occasion.”^[1] The Hebrew word translated as “cursing” might mean “slander” or “grumble.”^[2] In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases this verse as “Don’t eavesdrop on the conversation of others. What if the gossip’s about you, and you’d rather not hear it?”