James 3:6

6. The apostle catches at the thought of a fire, and expands it. Doubtless, many a synagogue had been set into wild conflagration by this fire… the tongue. Perhaps as fire here corresponds to setteth on fire, so world of iniquity may correspond to defileth the whole body. While world, then, is an image of filth and corruption, fire indicates inflammation and destruction. Is Rather, is constituted or placed among the members.

Course of nature Absurdly rendered by Alford “orb of creation!” with which the tongue has little to do. The words literally mean, the wheel of generation. But what does that mean? The expression is no way illustrated, as some commentators suppose, by the image of a wheel set on fire by its own rapidity, for here the setting on fire is done, not by the wheel itself, but by the tongue. Nor can there be any allusion to “the world in its various revolutions,” (as Wordsworth,) or to the cycle of animal creation, (as Alford,) for over neither of them has the human tongue any notable influence. The phrase is clearly a physiological one, suggested by the word body, referring to the evolutions that revolve within our bodily system.

The tongue defiles our body, and inflames all the natural functions evolved within it. The circulation of the blood was, indeed, unknown to our apostle, but that round of alimentary, sexual, and passional appetites and gratifications of which the blood-circle is the base, and through which our system whirls, is known to all philosophy. How the roll of this wheel, especially in its sexual department, may be affected by the tongue we all know. The phrase, of nature, is the same as is translated natural in James 1:23, where see note. The face there was the face derived from our generative origin; the wheel here is the internal system derived to us by generation, whose involution carries around the complex circle of our passional life. Our translators’ words, then, hit about the true idea. The tongue does set on fire the course of our inward passional nature, inflaming the whirl of sensuality, gluttony, drunkenness, rage, and fight. Huther’s and Alford’s objection, that the writer would not mention, literally, the whole body, and then “again express it in a figure,” is invalid. To mention first the whole external body literally, and then express in figure the interior blended functions, nervous and mental, is perfectly natural. The exterior body is named with literality because it is plainly visible; the interior functions, being conceptual, are best expressed in conceptual phrase. The mention of the body locates the described functions.

Set on fire of hell First, our inward nature is set on fire by the tongue as by a torch, and the torch is set on fire by gehenna. The tongue catches from hell the fire with which it inflames our blood, and circulates the burning sensation through our system.