The Fool Brings Money but Not a Listening Heart

A “dry morsel” is bread with nothing to dip it in, no oil or sour wine like the dish Boaz offers Ruth in Ruth 2:14. The “sacrifices” are the meat of peace offerings, which the family ate at home after the altar had its share. The Hebrew says “sacrifices of strife”, as if the quarrel were served as the main course.

The servant is maskil, one who acts with insight, and the son is mevish, one who brings shame. “Part of the inheritance among the brethren” means sharing it out as if he were one of the sons. Property normally followed birth, so the verse describes a household where competence rewrote the will.

The “fining pot” is a crucible, the clay vessel for melting silver; the furnace takes the harder work of gold. “Trieth” is bahan, to assay, test metal for purity. 27:21 repeats the first line and then makes praise the fire that tests a man. Here the LORD is the assayer, and the metal is the heart.

In 1611 “naughty” meant worthless or wicked, from naught, not a child’s mischief. The Hebrew is a “tongue of destructions”. The verse judges people by what they listen to: a liar is known not only by what he says but by the ear he gives to other destroyers.

The first line nearly repeats 14:31, where oppressing the poor insults their Maker; here the offence is mockery, a sneer rather than a theft. To laugh at someone’s poverty is to taunt the one who made them. The second line reaches the private glee felt at another’s disaster, and says it too will be answered.

Grandchildren crown the old, just as the grey head is a crown in 16:31. The second line runs the other way: children take their glory from their fathers. It is one of the few sayings in the book where honour is said to flow downward from parent to child as well as upward.

“Excellent speech” is literally “a lip of excess”, lofty or pretentious talk. The “prince” is nadiv, a noble, a word that also means generous. If grand language sounds wrong from a fool, lying sounds far worse from a nobleman, whose rank is supposed to stand for open-handed honesty. The argument moves from the lesser case to the greater.

The “precious stone” is literally a stone of favour or charm, like a lucky amulet. The verse describes how a gift looks to “him that hath it”, which may mean the giver who trusts it to open doors, or the one who receives it. It is an observation of what people believe about gifts, and verse 23 will judge it.

“Covereth” is the verb of 10:12, “love covereth all sins”. The one who covers an offence is pursuing love; the one who keeps bringing it up (the verb means to repeat, to go over again) splits close friends. “Very friends” is the same word as the “chief friends” of 16:28, separated there by a whisperer.

“Entereth” means to go down, to sink in. Deuteronomy 25:3 capped a legal beating at forty stripes so a man would not be degraded, which makes a hundred stripes a deliberately impossible number. One word of correction goes deeper into a wise man than an illegal flogging goes into a fool.

“Messenger” is mal’akh, which also means angel, so the cruel messenger may be a king’s officer sent to crush a revolt or an agent of divine judgment, as in the “evil angels” of Psalm 78:49. The Hebrew order can also be read “a rebel seeks only evil”. Either way, rebellion brings a hard visitor to the door.

Bears lived in Israel’s hill country until well after biblical times, and 2 Kings 2:24 records their danger. Hushai describes David’s men as “chafed in their minds, as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field” (2 Samuel 17:8). Of all the animals the Bible uses for fury, this one is chosen, and the fool is still ranked worse.

Repaying evil for good is David’s charge against Nabal in 1 Samuel 25:21, “he hath requited me evil for good”, and Joseph’s steward’s question in Genesis 44:4. The punishment is domestic: evil does not merely visit such a man, it moves into his house and will not leave.

The picture is of letting water out, opening a sluice in an irrigation channel or a crack in a dam: a trickle that widens the gap it runs through. “Meddled with” is the King James sense of engaging in a fight. The Hebrew verb means to break out, and it appears again in 18:1 and 20:3.

“Justifieth” is a courtroom term, to declare someone in the right. Deuteronomy 25:1 tells judges to “justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”; this verse names the exact reversal. Isaiah 5:23 pronounces woe on those who “justify the wicked for reward”, which links this verse to the bribe of verse 23.

A rare question in the book, and a sarcastic one. The “price” is the fee for instruction, money in hand to buy wisdom. “Heart” in Hebrew means mind and will together, so the fool arrives with cash and no capacity. Wisdom was earlier said to be worth buying (4:5, 4:7); what cannot be bought is the wanting.

The two lines can be read as contrast or as one idea. Either a friend loves at every season while a brother proves his worth only in trouble, or a true friend becomes a brother when trouble comes. 18:24 later sets a friend who “sticketh closer than a brother” against the family tie.

“Striketh hands” is the handshake that sealed a guarantee for another man’s debt, warned against in 6:1, 11:15 and 22:26. “In the presence of his friend” may mean in front of witnesses or on behalf of his neighbour. The man is “void of understanding”, lacking heart, the same phrase as 15:21.

“Exalteth his gate” may mean building a grand doorway, a display of wealth that invites envy and robbery. Many commentators take the gate as the mouth, as in Micah 7:5, “keep the doors of thy mouth”, which makes it boasting. Both readings fit a verse that begins with loving a fight.

A “froward heart” is twisted, bent out of shape. The “perverse tongue” belongs to one who turns about with his tongue, a man who says one thing and then its opposite. The heart finds no good, the tongue falls into harm: the inside and outside of the same crookedness.

Two words for fool appear. The first is kesil, the dull and stubborn fool; the second is naval, the word that gives Nabal his name in 1 Samuel 25:25, “Nabal is his name, and folly is with him”. The naval is the coarse, godless kind, and the father of one has no joy at all.

The word rendered “medicine” occurs only here and means healing or cure. A merry heart “doeth good”, literally makes healing good. The broken spirit “drieth the bones”, the reverse of 15:30, where good news makes the bones fat. Joy is pictured as moisture and marrow; despair as drought in the skeleton.

The “bosom” is the fold of the robe, where money was carried out of sight, as the lot was carried in 16:33. The gift passes from one bosom to another without anyone seeing. Deuteronomy 16:19 says a gift “doth blind the eyes of the wise”, and 21:14 names “a reward in the bosom” again.

The first line is literally “wisdom is in front of the face of the discerning”: it is where he is already looking. The fool’s eyes are at “the ends of the earth”, the phrase used for the farthest horizon in Deuteronomy 28:49 and Psalm 2:8. He scans the edge of the world and misses what is before him.

Verse 21 grieved for the father; this verse adds the mother, named as “her that bare him”, which recalls the labour of birth. “Grief” is ka‘as, vexation, the word for provocation. “Bitterness” renders a word found nowhere else, a taste of gall that the son puts in his mother’s mouth.

The verse opens with “also”, as if continuing a list of injustices already begun in verse 15. To “strike princes for equity” is to flog nobles for doing right. “Is not good” is a deliberate understatement Proverbs uses when it means something is very bad, as again in 18:5 and 24:23.

“Spareth” is hasakh, to hold back, the same verb as “he that spareth his rod” in 13:24. The man of knowledge rations his words the way a careful parent does not ration correction. The Hebrew text has two readings for “excellent spirit”: “cool of spirit” and “precious of spirit”; the King James margin gives “cool”.

“Shutteth” is atam, to stop up, the word used for stopping one’s ears in 21:13. Job makes the same observation to his friends in Job 13:5: “O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.” The fool is not made wise by silence; he is only “counted” and “esteemed” so.