This was said in reply to the charge that he had a foul spirit in him.
when name calling gets serious
serious engagement slips away
leaving a contest of epithetsif you claim my spirit evil
let me show you how evil
even a holy spirit can bethis is no longer a spat
but has escalated to a spite
so there is nothing for you but a spitroasting over ever-hot coals
puts Prometheus’ punishment to shame
escalate this line at your own peril
Legal experts rely on precedent. In this fashion decisions can be made that give either/or results. This is also the way that the evil of the ages is carried alongside whatever wisdom finally surfaced after ages of injustice showed its harm to all, privileged and unprivileged alike.
It is the misnaming of good as destructive that brought forth the above indictment.
Go back and jump directly from verse 22 to 30. This puts an important protection around verse 29 and our tendency to apply it inappropriately. Ministries of healing and justice are not blasphemous, but reveal a current unconscious or privileged blasphemy.
A note in the Christian Community Bible is much clearer about this than its successor, The New Christian Community Bible (how easy it is, little by little, to self-censor our prophetic self):
Those who systematically attribute bad intentions to good work done by others, by the Church, by other parties, sin against the Holy Spirit. The one who recognizes the truth but not God is better off than the one who says he believes in God and does not recognize the truth.
Into this life and death confrontation we have the equivalent of, “I’m rubber, you’re glue; your words bounce off me and stick to you.”
Eventually we will find that this is not a debate that can be “won” by verbal sparing in the short-run for it is as perennial as any of the seven deadly entitlements that keep showing up in lives not willing to come face-to-face with them—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. All that is available is to continue acting out of their corresponding virtues and accept that as enough—humility, generosity, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and persistence.