Chapter 26

The first 12 verses of this chapter are very difficult to interpret. As a whole the chapter is not too difficult. In it we have a triad of monsters—three different types of monster believers. The first of these monsters is found in the first twelve verses, where the fool is found, and this is the difficult part of the passage. The fool is the believer minus Bible doctrine in his soul. In verses 13-19 we have the slothful man, a believer who is idle or lazy or lacking in self-discipline. The third monster in this passage is the slanderer, the believer who is guilty of the sins of the tongue. The fool is guilty of the sins of the mind; the slothful is guilty of the sins of the body; the slanderer is guilty of the sins of the tongue.

Verse 1 – a parabolic distich. We have a double illustration and then the point. “As snow in summer, and as rain in the harvest”—the Bible must be interpreted in the time in which it was written. At the time in which this was written they had an agricultural economy and there were two things that made it difficult for the economy to survive. The first was snow in the summer because the snow covered the pastures, the sheep and the cattle could not graze, and this was detrimental. The second was rain at the harvest. It very rarely ever rained in Palestine at harvest time but if it did it hindered the gathering of the harvest. So we have two things that were detrimental to production. These are analogous to “honour is not seemly.” Not seemly is literally not suitable or not becoming. Honour is not becoming for a fool. The fool is simply the believer minus Bible doctrine. He has no understanding of phases two and three or any of the doctrines pertaining to them. The word honour actually means success, recognition, wealth, any of the status symbols of life. A person who is minus doctrine cannot appreciate or the various status symbols of life.

When a believer has doctrine he can enjoy the details of life. But if he is minus doctrine all of these things will make him miserable. So the fool is simply the believer who is minus doctrine. He may have the details of life but they make him miserable. This is for the believer only; there are a lot of unbelievers around enjoying these things. The believer minus doctrine is the fool and nothing really makes him happy because he doesn’t have the perspective. The key to happiness for the believer is Bible doctrine: the perspective of life, the orientation to life is all found in Bible doctrine.

Principle

1. The believer minus doctrine cannot stand human prosperity.

2. Prosperity only increases the folly of the ignorant believer.

3. Prosperity or honour hinders the production of the believer. He is a believer but he never produces.

4. Like snow in the summer he gets his eyes on an unusual event. Like rain in the harvest his production is limited.

5. Such a believer thinks well of himself instead of the Lord. He has his eyes on himself.

6. The result is obvious. He fails to respond to the Lord and therefore he reacts to people. He has no doctrine with which to operate. Doctrine is the fuel on which the human soul responds to God.

7. Snow in the summer destroys scenery—it damages the flowers! The believer is here for a purpose, his life can be wonderful, he can have the dynamics of phase two of the plan of God. But he doesn’t have the dynamics of phase two and he is minus doctrine. So he is like an unusual event, a snow storm in the summer.

8. The animals cannot graze in the pasture covered with snow. This means the fool minus doctrine produces in his area a spiritual drought. The spiritual issues are not clarified, there is no gospel, no divine viewpoint, no divine dynamics of phase two.

Verse 2 – a second parabolic distich. The first line illustrates the point of doctrine in the second line. “As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.” This is an amalgamation of poor translation plus anachronism. In other words, there is no way that you can get the correct meaning of this because it is not correctly translated in parts, it is anachronistic in parts.

From the Hebrew we discover that the word bird here is not bird. It is a specific type, a sparrow. So to begin with this reads, “As the sparrow by flying.” The word wandering means to be upset. Apparently sparrows get upset, and when they do they hit the air and the higher they go in the air the more vulnerable they are to birds of prey. As long as a sparrow stays close to the ground he is relatively safe. The first part of this parabolic distich is referring to a “cluck” sparrow. Instead of sticking around where the food is on the ground, eating seeds etc., this sparrow has to get all excited about something and take off into the wild blue yonder where he is a dead sparrow in short order. This is analogous to the believer who instead of living in Bible doctrine takes off for the wild blue yonder. So it is an analogy to the fool—the believer minus doctrine. When the believer gets away from Bible doctrine he is out of his element, he is vulnerable, he is miserable, he is a “cluck,” in other words.

The swallow is apparently a similar bird, except that the swallow is a great traveller, always interested in seeing some new place. This is what happens to the believer minus doctrine. He is always trying some new thing to make him happy. These are no substitute for Bible doctrine.

So the sparrow is the illustration of the believer minus doctrine and the swallow of the believer looking for something to make him happy.

“so the curse causeless” – actually, this is a gracious curse. Imagine a curse that is gracious! God is gracious and the curse comes from Him, and so it is actually a reference to divine discipline. And it does not say the gracious curse “shall not come.” It says, “the gracious curse shall come upon him.” The Hebrew word for not is lo, and is simply a negative. But the word “unto him” is also pronounced lo. The wrong lo has been translated in the KJV. So a gracious curse comes to the believer without doctrine. A gracious curse can take many forms, and it is because a believer does not know, understand, or orient to God’s plan, God’s Word – in other words, Bible doctrine.

Corrected translation: “As the sparrow fluttering into the air, as the swallow by flying, so the gracious curse shall come unto him [the fool].”

The believer minus doctrine is not only vulnerable to divine discipline but also the terrible miseries that come from self-induced sufferings. He may have all of the details of life but these only make him miserable. It takes doctrine to really enjoy the details of life and to put them in their proper perspective. Without doctrine any believer has had it! He is a fish out of water.

Verse 3 – what do you do with the believer minus doctrine. He is going to get the works! Here we have the restraint of the fool [the believer minus doctrine]. This should be translated, “A whip for the horse, a spur for the ass, and a rod for the fools back.” A whip makes no difference to an ass, but he responds to a spur or a goad. These bother the ass. The whip or the drop across the neck of the horse bothers the horse. The point is that the believer minus Bible doctrine spends his whole life getting spurred and whipped. This is really not what God intended but you can have it if you want it—just stay away from doctrine.

How do you handle a fool? Verses 4 & 5 give the negative and the positive: v.4, how not to; v. 5, how to do so. The first thing that these two verses call for is something that doctrine gives you—flexibility. You handle a fool in two ways.

Verse 4 – “Answer” means to reply, to respond, to dispute, to react. “Answer not the fool [believer minus doctrine] according to his folly.” The folly in verse four and folly in verse 5 are different. In verse four folly refers to mental attitude sins. The fool is jealous, bitter, vindictive and petty, angry, hostile. So don’t you be these things. Don’t be jealous; don’t answer sneer for sneer, pettiness for pettiness. In other words, answer not means do not retaliate. Don’t lower yourself to his level. When he is mental attitude sin, don’t you stoop to mental attitude sins. Romans 12:19.

Verse 5 – the positive side. Folly in this verse is human viewpoint, anything that is the antithesis of Bible doctrine. When the fool comes up with human viewpoint you answer him with divine viewpoint. This time your answer is doctrine. 2 Corinthians 10:5,6.

“lest he be wise in his own conceit” – his own conceit [eyes] is any human viewpoint concept dealing with emotionalism, sincerity, guilt complex, etc. In other words, if his guilt complex is not challenged he goes on carrying this. The Christian way of life absolutely forbids anyone to have a guilt complex. You answer to fool in this verse by taking him to 1 John 1:9; Philippians 3:13; Hebrews 12:15. You take him to the passages which deal with his particular problem.

Verse 6 – the instability of a fool. This makes sense in the English but it is not sense because the idioms are not brought out here. When you literally translate an idiom you come up with nothing. An idiom has a meaning other than its literal translation.

This doesn’t mean to send a message by a fool, it is an idiom for a transaction of business. If you are in any executive position don’t hire a fool. In other words, don’t hire a believer minus doctrine. Hire a reliable unbeliever or hire a believer with doctrine, but never mess around in business with a believer minus doctrine. If you hire an unstable believer minus doctrine it is like two things: having your feet cut off—we would say, like getting shot down, etc.; “and drinketh damage” – we do not have an idiom in our language like this one. Drinking damage is an idiom for loss in business. The believer minus doctrine is unstable, undependable. Do not hire him or do business with him.

In verses 7-9 we have the preaching of the fool. This is what happens when a man gets into the pulpit and he doesn’t know Bible doctrine. We have here three parabolic distiches.

Verse 7 – the word parable is literally a proverb. The Hebrew word is mashal which comes from the verb to rule and it means a point of doctrine that rules the life. It is doctrine given in poetry. So here is a fool, a believer minus doctrine, trying to explain a proverb. In other words, a fool taking a passage of scripture and trying to make something out of it.

“The legs of the lame [lit. cripple] are not equal” – the illustration. The progress of the believer minus doctrine in the spiritual life is nil. What is worse is that same believer minus doctrine preaching from the Bible, because not only is he confused but he confuses everyone else or gives them erroneous, incorrect information—“so is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.” The fool trying to preach the Word makes his congregation off-balance.

Verse 8 – the second illustration. To bind a stone in a sling means to load the sling. They had two kinds of sling in the ancient world. There was the hand sling which David used to kill Goliath and there was heavy artillery. By the time of Alexander the Great they develop these things to where they could hurl a 25-pound rock half a mile. The word sling here refers to the artillery. But it was possible to load the sling and when it was released it would just go up in the air and come down somewhere without hitting anything. The word honour is the key, it has to do with reward, recognition, success symbols of any kind. The point is very simple: firing a stone or projectile out of a piece of artillery with no target in mind just simply means you have wasted the shot. The fool has no doctrinal perspective to appreciate success in any form, he is minus doctrine. So the stone from the sling is fired into the air and this is like bestowing honour on a fool, shooting honour out the window. When you bestow honour on a fool of any kind it is like throwing honour out the window. It doesn’t mean anything.

Verse 9 – “As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so it a proverb in the mouth of a fool.” The point is, when you take a believer who is minus doctrine and he is a preacher, and he stands up to teach a portion of scripture, he can’t tell you what the passage says. But he can cry, emote, scream, shout, speak eloquently, and he doesn’t tell you anything. The thorn represents the true interpretation.

Verse 10 – the great contrast. This verse is badly translated in the KJV. The first line is literally, “Much dances for all.” To illustrate: somewhere at some time you have to see a dance that was stimulating, exciting, enjoyable, and to which you respond. The word to dance here is a piel participle, it is a dance that calls a tremendous response. Much is a Hebrew word for the greatest thing of all—doctrine. Doctrine dances. In other words, doctrine is interesting and stimulating. It produces happiness, everything that is positive and wonderful. You focus your attention on it as you would the dancer. The dancer is doctrine—“Much.” Doctrine removes your problems, frustrations, heartaches. It takes these things away and puts in place of them inner happiness, peace, stability, power.

“all” – it does it for all believers. The wise believer learns doctrine; the fool is minus doctrine.

The second line starts out with a conjunction of contrast, “but he” – referring to God. The next word is rewarded and it doesn’t mean to reward at all, it means to pay wages: “but he [God] pays wages.” The verb occurs twice and He pays wages to two kinds of people: to the fool and to the transgressor. Fool describes his person, a person minus doctrine; transgressor is the Hebrew word for pass bye. It is a qal active participle and so it should be the by-passer. He constantly py-passes doctrine.

Corrected translation: “Much [doctrine] dances for everyone [all believers], but he [God] pays wages to the fool, to the one by-passing [doctrine].”

Notice: God gives to the believer who has doctrine what he cannot earn or deserve. This is operation grace. But the fool is the legalist, and in his legalism he wants to earn something from God. So God lets him earn it, and the only thing you can earn from God is discipline—and he gets it.

Verse 11 – the passover of the fool. The dog returns to his vomit thinking he might have missed something! This is a picture of the believer minus doctrine who is miserable under his human viewpoint. Out of sheer desperation he goes to Bible class, sticks it out grimly for a couple of time, but he doesn’t like doctrine and he is bored. So he goes back to his vomit—the bowling league, TV, his pleasures, whatever he does. He goes away from where he could learn Bible doctrine because he is a fool, he doesn’t care for doctrine. He returns to his vomit; it is his nature. So he is miserable again. The believer who goes back to doctrine and tries it, and then leaves it to go back into the details of life minus doctrine is just like the dog.

“so a fool returneth to his folly” – the fool is the believer minus doctrine. He goes and listens and then gets away. Then word return means to repeat something again and again. He returns repeatedly to his vomit.

Verse 12 – there is something worse than a fool. “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit [eyes]?” Pride. It refers to mental attitude sins.

“there is more hope for a fool than for him” – there is more hope for the fool who goes back to his vomit than for the kind of a fool [believer minus doctrine] who is guilty than the mental attitude sins. This is to have a mind with envy, jealousy, pride, hatred, vindictiveness, implacability, and so on. These mental attitude sins are actually the greatest hindrance to the Christian way of life. This kind of a person is worse than the fool who simply goes back to his pleasures, he is a trouble-maker.

Verses 13-19, the slothful believer; verses 20-28, the slanderer.

Verse 13 – the Bible must be interpreted in the time in which it was written. In the ancient world, except for large cities with walls and gates, lions often lived on the edge of town, and they often got into towns. Whenever they came into town everyone would go indoors. The word slothful itself is from the Hebrew word ahtsel, and it simply means to be lazy, idle, lax. The slothful is sometimes called the sluggard. Both refer to a lazy person. The Hebrew word means a little more than that, it means someone lacking in self-discipline. The slothful person is not only lazy and idle and lax, but he has no self-discipline and has no ability to concentrate. He doesn’t feel like fulfilling an obligation and he uses an excuse. His excuse here in this verse was that there was a lion in the street. So we have the principle of procrastination based on rationalisation, postponing something that requires self-discipline. We might ask ourselves the question as to what the lions are in our street! These are excuses for keeping us from doing the things that should be done.

Verse 14 – a parabolic distich, a description of the slothful. The first line gives the illustration; the second line gives the point of doctrine.

“As the door turneth upon his hinges.” This is an illustration of a person who lacks self-discipline, who is therefore lazy and lacks concentration, as this person is in bed. The door moves on the same hinge all of the time. It cannot be separated from the hinge and therefore its movement is always connected with the hinge, associated with the hinge. And all of the action of the slothful person is connected with bed. He rolls over in bed and that is about all the effort he puts forth. His greatest action in bed is simply rolling over in bed, like a door on a hinge. His action is confined to the bed.

Verse 15 – what is the character of the slothful person? We are talking about believers in this passage. The book of Proverbs was written for believers, about believers. “The slothful hideth his hand in his bosom.” The word bosom is not there in the Hebrew. It is the word dish.

“it grieveth him to bring it again to his mouth” – in the ancient world they did not have the knife and fork and spoon as we now have them but they did have the knife upon which they skewered things. They cut things with it but they ate with their hands; they put their hands into the dish. The slothful man here is very hungry and he puts his hand into the dish, but it is a great effort to bring it back up to his mouth. This is really a general description of a person who lacks self-discipline. The words “it grieves” means it is difficult, it is a mental attitude. He doesn’t have the mental attitude to live a normal life.

Verse 16 – the mental attitude of the slothful person. The spiritually slothful person is one of the worst believers of all because his dynamics, power, inner happiness, his blessing, his very life is robbed of blessing. In most sins God disciplines us but in mental attitude sins we discipline ourselves. So the slothful believer is in the area of self-induced misery. This person is out of phase with the rest of society in the description and being out of phase with the rest of society is an analogy to the born again believer out of phase with the plan of God because of his mental attitude sins. The slothful is guilty of mental attitude sin and in this case pride is used to represent it.

“The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason.” The word sluggard is exactly the same Hebrew word as has been translated slothful. Being wiser in his own conceit is used for the whole realm of mental attitude sins. It specifies one of them: pride. He is wise in his own eyes. Literally we have, “than seven men who can give an excellent answer.” This phrase is a Hebrew idiom which was used in two ways in the ancient world. It was used academically and it was used politically. Academically, seven men who can give an excellent reason refers to the seven people at the top of the class. He considers himself smarter than those at the top of the class, even though he is not. Politically, it was used for the top men in the king’s council—seven advisers to the king. The slothful believer considers himself smarter than those who advise the king and do it well. There is a principle behind this. Usually the slothful believer is thinking about himself in terms of aggrandisement and he gives himself credit. He is the kind of a person who considers himself superior to everyone else and he really has nothing else to think about but himself. So in his pride he rationalises every situation as smarter, as greater, as better than anyone else. This kind of person can only be miserable—self-induced misery.

Verse 17 – a logical progression. The slothful person is a troublemaker. A person who thinks they are better than everyone else is going to try to straighten everyone else out, to stick his nose into everyone else’s business. This verse is literally translated: “He, seizing a dog by the ears passing by [i.e. the dog is a strange dog] is like unto one who meddles with strife [a problem] which does not concern him.” People who stick their nose into everyone’s business is just like passing by a strange dog and grabbing him by the ears. They get bitten! The word for passing by is the Hebrew word aber. It means to pass by, but in the hithpael stem it means to stick your nose in someone else’s affairs. The result is trouble.

Verses 18 & 19, a parabolic tetrastich—a four-line proverb. The first two lines give the illustration and the second two lines give the point of doctrine.

Verse 18 – “As a mad man.” This is analogous to the slothful person. He is a person who is full of mental attitude sins, and one day he cracks. Mental attitude sins put pressure on the mind until it cracks. Here we have a mad man going berserk, but he is a believer. When this person goes berserk he hurts people. When the slothful person starts interfering in the affairs of others he shoots them down. All Christian troublemakers are slothful people. The word for mad man in the Hebrew is pronounced lahahl and it means to be mentally weary. It means to faint in the mind; the mind snaps.

“casteth” – meaning to shoot a bow; “death” is the result.

Verse 19 – the principle. “So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, I was only joking.” The word deceive is not correct, it means to shoot with a bow and cause someone harm. It is in the piel stem here and it means to cause untold misery for someone. This person uses his tongue like the mad man uses his bow and arrow. He says he is just kidding! The words for “I am only kidding” is in the piel stem, and with this verb it has the concept of sincerity and lots of emotion.

Verse 20 – the slanderer. “Where no wood is, there the fire goes out.” Wood = sins of the tongue based on mental attitude sins. Where no wood is, i.e. where you don’t react, the fire goes out. You put it in God’s hands.

“so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceases” – these people are to be avoided, you do not retaliate, and the strife goes.

Verse 21 – “As coals are to burning coals.” The burning coals always cause the coals not burning to catch fire. When you retaliate then the person who is the hot coal turns you into a hot coal; “and wood to a fire” – here is a person who is burning and who has wronged you. All you do when you try to retaliate is throw yourself into their fire. They drag you down to their level.

“so is a contentious man to kindle strife” – the believer who is a fool, slothful, a slanderer, and has wronged you.

Verses 22 & 23, the hypocrisy of the slanderer.

Verse 22 is not correctly translated in the KJV. “The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.” The word that is wrong there is the word wounds. This is a verb—lahem in the hithpael stem. It actually means to eat something that is delicious, to eat a great delicacy. So the corrected translation is, “The words of the slanderer is like eating dainty morsels”—everyone listens to them; they swallow them. His hearers swallow the slander of a person like dainty morsels; they feed on them. It matters not whether they are true or not. People will believe what they want to believe. A person with mental attitude sins will swallow the whole thing; a person with Bible doctrine will ignore the whole thing.

“and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly” means they slide down easily.

Verse23 – two illustrations. This verse is not correctly translated in the KJV. It begins, “As a glaze of silver spread over a clay pot.” Who is the kind of person who pulls the wool over your eyes and gives you these dainty morsels? What is this slanderer like? The slanderer is always ‘sweet.’ He talks about the ‘gentle Jesus’ and ‘being compassionate’ and ‘loving everyone.’ He oozes all of this sweetness and light. This is just like a clay pot. Underneath he is a rat—mental attitude sins—but he has this nice, beautiful façade of sincerity and sweetness. Beware of sweet people! This is a person who is vicious but has a façade of sweetness.

The next line is an entirely different illustration: “lips glowing with love and a base heart.” This is a lever—called “hot-lips”! The word glowing means they are on fire. Lips on fire with love is an idiom which simply means a person with a fast line. It means he knows how to talk love. But inside he has a base heart—a wicked heart, mental attitude sins. On the inside he is rotten; on the outside very appealing.

Verse 24 – Here is the point. “He that hateth dissembleth with his lips” – inside is hatred but he covers it with a sweet line; “and layeth up deceit within.” In other words, inside he is deceitful when he has mental attitude sins of hatred.

Verse 25 – “When he speaketh fair” is literally, When he makes his voice sweet; “believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart [mind].” Seven is the full compliment; abominations refers to the mental attitude sins.

Verse 26 – Exposure of the slanderer. The KJV translation is not exactly what it means. “Whose hatred is covered by deceit” – he talks love while he thinks hate.

“his wickedness [mental attitude sins] shall be uncovered”—they are uncovered by his own slander. In other words, someone doesn’t get up and expose this person; he does it himself. You can tell by the way he talks. People begin to see by what he says. He talks love but he runs down people and from the content of his slander can be seen what he has in his soul. He exposes himself sooner or later, “shall be shewed to the congregation” is a niphal reflexive.

Verse 27 – the judgement of the slanderer. “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein” – this person is trying to hurt someone else; he is digging his own pit.

“he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon him” – you can never hurt someone else in vengeance as much as you hurt yourself.

Verse 28 – the perspective of the sins of the tongue. “A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted [an innocent victim]; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin.” There are two ways of destroying a person verbally. One is with a lie in gossip or slander or maligning; the other is through patronising. The flattering mouth is also involved here. Behind both the criticism and the patronising is the antagonism of mental attitude sins.