sftp "Received message too long" on OS X

Today I started receiving the following error when I tried to sftp to my localhost, both from the command line and from the Ruby Net:SFTP library:

$ sftp ftpuser@localhost
Password:
Received message too long 1399157792

Trivial digging revealed that ftpuser's .bashrc script was writing to stdout, which apparently is enough to confuse sftp all 'round. I modified the command it was running to redirect stdout to /dev/null, and the problem was resolved.