Beloved, I am glad to share with you today the above theme from Pr 26.1 and following. Indeed, itis not glory but the blows that suit the fool to make him take the path of wisdom (verses 1 to 8). Generally speaking, the Lord’s discipline and the reprehension of the righteous make us make more progress than compliments or honors. But let us not be without intelligence, like those domestic beasts that only the whip and the bridle are able to make obey “when they do not want to approach you” (verse 3; Ps 32.8-10). How much better it is indeed to acquire wisdom by allowing ourselves to be taught by the Word rather than by making painful experiences! The example of the prophet Micah before Ahab shows us that verses 4 and 5 do not contradict each other (1 Kings 22:10-28). By responding to the foolish king according to his folly (verse 15), Micah reached his conscience, made him uncomfortable. By then responding to him according to God’s thoughts and no longer according to his folly, the man of God made it clear that he had no part with it (verse 17). Let us also allow ourselves to be directed by the Spirit of God to know, according to the occasion, which of the two answers we have to deal with to fool. A lame march, whether it is the righteous (Pr 25:26) or the foolish (Pr 26:7, 9) removes all force from verbal testimony. Yes, let us ensure that our walk prepares the gospel of peace (Eph 6:10-20).
After the portrait of the fool (verses 1 to 12), here are other characters also detestable. The first is the sloth (verses 13 to 16) already often encountered. He uses imaginary dangers or difficulties as a pretext to evade his duties (verse 13) and even neglects to feed himself (verse 15). “The door turns on its hinges” (verse 14); “it makes a back and forth movement, but stays in the same place. Let us ask ourselves if we have advanced more than she has, if we have made any progress in our Christian life!” The sloth turns on his bed. One can stir, agitate, without providing any activity. The quarrelsome is also depicted (verses 17 to 21). He is adept at fanning the fire of arguments. But verse 17 has many applications. Taking sides in social, trade union, political conflicts… exposes a child of God to cruel “bites.”
Then come the rapporteur who also helps to fuel the quarrels (verses 20, 22), then the deceitful, disguising the hatred of his heart under kind words… (verses 23-25; see, for example, 2 Sam 20:9-10; Jeremiah 12:4-6). Jesus dealt with the various forms of wickedness and hypocrisy denounced in these verses (Matthew 17:14-21; Ps 38:12-16). How much He suffered! Like snow in summer, and like rain in the harvest, so glory does not befit a fool (vs. 1:8; Pr 19:10; Ec 10:6). What a calamity when snow would fall in summer, or rain preventing the work of the harvest! The same is true of the glory bestowed upon a fool, unable himself to appreciate or use it. He will only know how to hinder the blessings of which this glory, in other hands, would have been the source. Like the sparrow that goes here and there and the swallow that flies, so the curse without cause will not happen: Like those passerines that continually change places, the curse pronounced without cause does not reach the one it curses. This is the description of the act of a fool. The whip is for the horse, the bridle for the donkey, and the rod for the back of fools (v. 3; Pr 10:13; 19:29; Ps. 32:9). The whip punishes the horse and forces it to obey, the bridle forces the donkey to take the direction that its master wants – the fool is put on the level of animals without intelligence. He needs the same correction as they do. Instruction, exhortation, everything that appeals to consciousness and intelligence, is unknown to him and cannot attain him.
Do not respond to the fool according to his madness, lest you also look like him. Respond to the fool according to his madness, lest he be wise in his own eyes (vs. 4-5): Not to respond to the fool according to his madness is to refuse to associate oneself with one’s thoughts for fear of being considered foolish. It is in a word to watch over oneself and the character of the One one represents. – To answer him according to his madness is to seek, even in vain, to reach his conscience which tells him that the answer will not be according to his desires. In a word, it is to prove to him the difference between his thoughts and those of God. The prophet Micah’s response to Ahab, king of Israel (1 Kings 22:13-18), illustrates these two verses. He who sends messages by the hand of a fool cuts his feet and drinks injustice: To make a fool, that is to say, a man ignorant and unable to learn anything, the bearer of a message that I send, is to make me guilty of not having worn it myself and to put myself in the impossibility of ever wearing it; it is at the same time to appropriate myself, in the eyes of those to whom the message is addressed, the injustice of the one I sent.
The legs of the lame are without strength: such is a proverb in the mouth of fools: A wise maxim in the mouth of a fool will always lack entirely power and will not reach the goal. The one who gives glory to a fool is like a bag of precious stones in a pile of stones: To dispense honors to a man without intelligence and unable to understand what he has received, is to add precious stones to the pile of useless stones that are accumulated on the roads at the foot of the markers, not knowing what to do with it. They are lost and without any profit for anyone.
A thorn that enters the hand of a drunken man is a proverb in the mouths of fools (vs. 7: 9; Pr 23:35). A wise maxim in the mouth of a fool is of no benefit to the listeners, but it turns against the one who pronounces it and reaches it, without him even being aware of it, like the drunk man who is hurt without him feeling it. The powerful use violence against everyone; he takes the foolish and he pawns the passers-by: The powerful aims to dominate and enslave indifferently everyone. He hired useless people like the fool or passers-by. The first is no better in his eyes than the strangers who pass by and the abilities that neither he nor others care about. The tyrant only aims to enslave everyone and the only thing the fool is good at is to be dominated and enslaved.
As the dog returns to vomiting, the fool repeats his foolishness (v. 11; 2 Peter 2:22): This passage from Peter presents to us in a striking way all the characters of the one whom Proverbs calls the fool. A fool may have known “the way of justice,” but it has had no effect on his conscience. There is no hope for him: he inevitably returns to the things he had rejected, like the dog, to be impure, to what he vomited. Have you seen a wise man in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for himself (v. 12; Pr 29:20): To be wise in one’s own eyes is pride, self-righteousness. This man only has his self in front of him. The foolish, without knowledge of God and of himself, without the ability to understand, without intelligence, is in a less desperate condition than the presumptuous. There is no judgment more implacable than that of pride.
The sloth says: There is a roaring (lion) on the way, a lion in the streets (v. 13; Pr 22:13): He creates obstacles for himself and sees or pretends to see dangers where there are none, to dispense with acting. The door turns on his hinges, and the sloth on his bed (v. 14; Pr 6:9): The door turns on its hinges, moves from here, from there, without ever moving forward, opens and closes, without ever changing places. Such is the sloth on his bed. It turns left or right. Who benefits from this appearance of activity? It advances nothing and brings change only to laziness. The sloth pushes his hand into the dish, he is tired of bringing it back to his mouth (v. 15; Pr 19:24): The repetition of this passage, with a slight variation, is necessary here to complete the portrait of the sloth. He is already tired of plunging his hand into the dish; his weariness prevents him from bringing to his mouth the food he needs. It does not perform even the most ordinary functions of life, those without which one cannot live. In this way, it is not fed; he is useless to himself, how much more to others! The sloth is wiser in his eyes than seven men who respond with common sense: Is it not striking that the contentment of oneself that is presented to us as hopeless in v. 12 goes hand in hand with laziness? The sloth believes himself to be wiser than a full number of wise men. He brags about his own common sense which is to do nothing. Thus, this vice borders on pride and will undergo the same judgment.
The following verses have been compiled for your edification and grouped together for your better understanding.
The stupid man:
- Harvest
Gen 8:22 As long as the earth remains, the sowing and harvesting, the cold and the heat, the summer and the winter, the day and the night will not cease. Ex 23:16 You will observe the feast of the harvest, of the beginnings of your labor, of what you have sown in the fields; and the feast of the harvest, at the end of the year, when you collect from the fields the fruit of your labor. Pr 10:5 He who amass during the summer is a prudent son, he who sleeps during the harvest is a son who shames. Pr 26:1 Like snow in summer, and rain during the harvest, so glory is not suitable for a fool.
- Correction stick
Ps 89:33 I will punish with the rod their transgressions, and with blows their iniquities; Pr 26.3 The whip is for the horse, the bit for the donkey, and the rod for the back of the foolish. Pr 29:15 The rod and the correction give wisdom, but the child left to himself shames his mother. Lm 3:1 I am the man who saw misery under the rod of his fury.
- Sufficiency, warning against
Pr 3:7 Do not be wise in your own eyes, Fear the Lord, and turn away from evil: Pr 26:12 If you see a man who believes himself wise, there is more to be expected from a fool than from him. Rom 12:16 Have the same feelings toward one another. Do not aspire to what is high, but let yourself be attracted by what is humble. Do not be wise in your own eyes. 1 Cor 8.2 If anyone thinks he knows something, he has not yet known as he should know.
- Human flattery, warning against
Jb 32:21 I will have no regard for appearance, and I will not flatter anyone; Ps 12:4 Let the Lord exterminate all flattering lips, The tongue that arrogantly dissaves, Pr 28:23 He who takes away others then finds more favor than the one whose tongue is flattering. 1 Thess 2:5 Never, in fact, have we used flattering words, as you know; never have we had greed as our motive, God is a witness to it.
From all the above, we note that theburning lips and the evil heart are like silver litharge applied to a vase of earth: Challenge yourself to the burning protestations of friendship that cover an evil heart. It is like the litharge, pleasing to the eye, whose vase is varnished; a coating without any value in itself, but deceiving about the coarse nature of what it covers. He who hates disguises himself by his lips; but within him he feeds fraud. When he makes his voice graceful, do not believe him, for there are seven abominations in his heart: This verse presents a worse state than that of the previous verse. It shows the hatred lodged in the heart. This man disguises her with his speeches; he feeds in his heart a conscious fraud; he uses graceful words and his soul is full of them overflowing with abominable thoughts. Is hatred hidden under concealment, its wickedness will be discovered in the congregation: This hatred can be so well hidden under false pretenses that the eyes of men cannot discover it; but, in the congregation of Israel (for us, in the Christian Assembly), it can no longer be so. Christ being there, in the midst of His own, evil is manifested, for it cannot subsist in His holy presence. Whoever digs a pit will fall into it and the stone will return to the one who rolls it : Thegoal of harming the neighbor and even destroying it is no longer hidden. The villain digs the pit so that the object of his hatred falls into it, he rolls the stone so that it falls on him and crushes him. In both cases, God who sees and probes everything, allows these evil designs to turn to the detriment of the wicked. And thegallows intended for Mordecai becomes the instrument of death for Haman. For thefalse tongue hates those it has crushed and the flattering mouth brings ruin: Falsehood in words is always hateful even after crushing its victim, it still hates her. Flattery is an even more dangerous means of ruin, it leads to its loss the one it praises. For the procedure to be followed in many circumstances, and the consequences of the actions of men, in a word, which, in detail, is what characterizes wisdom, what can be prudence for man and divine discretion for the children of God, and also, the fruit of God’s government, whatever appearances may be for a time. It is worth noting that this is neither redemption nor propitiation; but that he proposes a walk in accordance with the wisdom of God’s government. Our prayers are with you all.
PRAYER OF ACCEPTANCE OF JESUS CHRIST AS LORD AND PERSONAL SAVIOR
I now invite every person who wants to become a new creation by walking in the truth, to pray with me the following prayer:
Lord Jesus, I have long walked in the lusts of the world ignoring your love for humans. I admit to having sinned against you and ask your forgiveness for all my sins, because today I have decided to give you my life by taking you as Lord and personal Savior. I recognize that you died on the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead for me.
I am now saved and born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lead me every day to the eternal life that you give to all who obey your Word. Reveal yourself to me and strengthen my heart and faith, so that your light may shine in my life right now.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for accepting me into your divine family, so that I may also contemplate the wonders of your kingdom.
I will now choose a nearby waterpoint to baptize myself by immersion, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
All adoration, power and glory are yours, now and forever and ever. Amen!
I would be happy to react to any questions and comments you may have, before sharing with you tomorrow ” Continuation of the proverbs on the moral life; Miscellaneous maxims (Pr 27).
May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you abundantly.
David Feze, Servant of the Almighty God.