Wednesday
Wednesday
Proverbs—the Fool
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 1:7
The book of Proverbs is evidently the product of prolonged reflection and careful composition. Each epigram has been chiseled by a skillful carver in words. Moreover, many of them appear to express common sense as much as the truth of God. Yet human and divine wisdom are not necessarily incompatible with each other. Through these ancient nuggets God still speaks his Word to us today.
One of the attractive features of the proverbs is that many of them are not just bare sentences but are clothed in tragi-comic characters like the fool, the scoffer, and the sluggard.
It is obvious that the fool lacks wisdom. Indeed, “fools despise wisdom and discipline” (v. 7). This combination of wisdom and discipline is significant, for the fool’s folly is more moral than intellectual. The fool is not unintelligent but rather lacking in restraint.
One particular area in which the fool lacks self-discipline is in the control of the tongue. It is natural to call him “a chattering fool” (10:8) whose mouth “gushes folly” (15:2). If he should ever succeed in keeping silent, then “even a fool is thought wise” (17:28), but it would be uncharacteristic for him to do so. One hopes that “in the assembly at the gate,” where the elders meet for discussion, he might have something to contribute, but in this situation “he has nothing to say” (24:7). Normally, however, he “delights in airing his own opinions” (18:2). He even “answers before listening,” which is “his folly and his shame” (v. 13).
So we are warned to avoid fools, for it is “better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool in his folly” (17:12).
For further reading: Proverbs 9:13–18