Teachers Having Itching Ears by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 24, 1883

Teachers Having Itching Ears

By Editor

AN amusing instance of carelessness in reading the Bible appears in the Gospel Banner. Speaking of a certain paper, it says that its editor is evidently none of those “teachers having itching ears.” It is a matter of observation that people having itching ears, i. e., ears that itch to hear something pleasant, will multiply to themselves teachers, in the hope of being satisfied; as the Syriac has it, they will “multiply to themselves teachers, in the itching of their hearing.” But how the teachers could be spoken of as having itching ears, we cannot imagine, unless they itch for applause. And that would not be so far from the truth, after all, though it is not what the text means.