264. What Are the "Idle Words" that Men Shall Give Account of?

The passage in Matt. 12:36 means unseemly or improper conversation, levity, slander, scoffing, boasting, swearing, mocking at sacred things. The Saviour had been speaking of blasphemy and of the scoffing attitude of the Pharisees, who imputed his miracles to Beelzebub. The "idle words" presumably referred more particularly to their sceptical way of accounting for the miracles, of which they had spoken slightingly.