Proverbs 26 — Like Snow in Summer, Honor Does Not Befit a Fool

Today’s Passage: Proverbs 26

This chapter reads almost like a gallery, and it will help to know that before we walk into it, because we are about to meet three people the book has been warning us about all along, and this time it lingers over each of them long enough for us to see the whole face. First comes the fool, and the chapter cannot leave him alone, holding him up saying after saying, picture after picture, until we understand once and for all why honor no more fits him than snow fits a summer day. Then comes the sluggard, that memorable man who will not get out of bed, four short verses that are half warning and half comedy. And last comes the most dangerous of the three, the whisperer and the deceiver, the person whose smooth words carry a hidden fire, and the chapter shows us both how much harm such a mouth can do and how quietly a quarrel dies once the whispering stops. Read it slowly and let each portrait hang before you a while, because wisdom is in large part the art of recognizing these three before they do their damage.

As you read, hold this: The fool who will not learn, the sluggard who will not rise, and the gossip who will not stop feeding the fire are three portraits of folly the wise learn to see coming.

Proverbs 26:1–7 (BSB)

¹ Like snow in summer and rain at harvest, honor does not befit a fool. ² Like a fluttering sparrow or darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest. ³ A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools! ⁴ Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be like him. ⁵ Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he become wise in his own eyes. ⁶ Like cutting off one’s own feet or drinking violence is the sending of a message by the hand of a fool. ⁷ Like lame legs hanging limp is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.

Notice at once how this cluster teaches by picture rather than by argument, handing us one homely image after another and trusting us to feel the point before we can explain it. The very first saying sets the key: honor does not befit a fool any more than snow befits a summer day or a downpour befits the harvest season, when the grain lies out drying and rain would only ruin it. Honor given to a fool is not merely wasted; it is out of season, a thing that does not belong, and everyone with eyes can see that it does not fit. Then comes a gentler picture that steadies the anxious heart, for a curse that is not deserved is like a sparrow flitting past or a swallow darting overhead, never landing, never coming to roost. An empty curse has no power to settle on a life that has not earned it, and there is quiet comfort in that.

From there the sayings turn to the fool himself and the strange truth that some people can only be reached the way a stubborn animal is reached, through the body, because the ear has closed. A whip belongs to the horse and a bridle to the donkey, the proverb says, and a rod to the fool’s back, not out of cruelty but because he has left no other door open to him. And then, right here, we come to the two verses that have puzzled and delighted readers for centuries, the two that seem to contradict each other on purpose. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, says the first, or you will sink to his level and become just like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, says the second, or he will walk away thinking himself wise. Both are true, and holding them together is itself a piece of wisdom, for they are teaching us that there is no single rule for dealing with folly. Sometimes the wise thing is to refuse the argument entirely, to decline to get down in the mud and trade insults, because the fool wants nothing more than to drag you into his own way of talking. Other times the wise thing is to meet the foolish claim head on and expose it, so the fool does not stroll off convinced he has won. Which one the moment calls for is exactly what wisdom must discern, and that discernment is the whole point. The cluster closes by showing what a fool does with the very things wisdom prizes: entrust him with an important message and it is as good as cutting off your own feet, and put a wise proverb in his mouth and it hangs there as useless as the limp legs of a man who cannot walk. He can carry the words, but he cannot carry the wisdom.

Proverbs 26:8–14 (BSB)

⁸ Like binding a stone into a sling is the giving of honor to a fool. ⁹ Like a thorn that goes into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of a fool. ¹⁰ Like an archer who wounds at random is he who hires a fool or passerby. ¹¹ As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly. ¹² Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. ¹³ The slacker says, “A lion is in the road! A fierce lion roams the public square!” ¹⁴ As a door turns on its hinges, so the slacker turns on his bed.

The portrait of the fool comes to its finish here, and the images grow sharper the closer we look. To hand a fool honor is like binding a stone into a sling, the proverb says, and the picture only lands once you remember what a sling is for: a stone tied fast into the pouch will never fly, so all the force in the world accomplishes nothing. Give a fool a place of honor and you have done exactly that, taken something meant to go far and fixed it where it can do no good. Then the saying about the proverb in the fool’s mouth returns from a new angle, and this time it is dangerous rather than merely useless, like a thornbush swung about in the hand of a drunk man, as likely to tear his own flesh or someone else’s as to serve any purpose. A wise word handled by a fool does not become wise; it becomes a hazard.

And then comes the saying the whole New Testament remembered, the plainest and least flattering picture in the chapter: as a dog returns to its own vomit, so a fool (כְּסִיל) kesil, pronounced keh-SEEL. Strong's H3684, fool, one who is dull and stubbornly resistant to correction. This is the word that dominates the first half of the chapter, sounding again and again in verse after verse, and it is worth knowing exactly what kind of person it names, because our English word “fool” is broader and blunter than the Hebrew. A kesil is not a person of low intelligence or a simpleton to be pitied; the book has other words for those. The kesil is the dull, thickheaded fool, the one who is not so much unable to learn as unwilling, a person whose problem lies not in the mind but in the will. He hears correction and shrugs it off, he returns to his folly the way a dog returns to its vomit, and he is perfectly content in his own thickness. That is why the chapter can pile up so many pictures of him, for the kesil is a settled type, a person who has made a kind of peace with folly and no longer feels its shame. Understanding this softens nothing, but it does explain the chapter’s strange mix of exasperation and near comedy, and it explains too why verse twelve can say there is more hope for a kesil than for the man wise in his own eyes. The dullard might yet be startled awake; the self-satisfied man has decided he is already there. The fear of the LORD, which this book calls the beginning of wisdom, is precisely the thing the kesil refuses, for it begins with knowing you do not yet know, and that is the one lesson he will not take. repeats his folly. It is meant to disgust us, and it does, because folly is not a single stumble but a circling back, an appetite that keeps returning to the very thing that sickened it. That is what makes the fool so hard to help, for he does not learn from the ruin his folly brings; he goes back to it. Yet the chapter has one more turn to make before it lets the fool go, and it is a startling one. For all it has said against the fool, verse twelve names someone with even less hope: the man who is wise in his own eyes. There is more hope for a plain fool, the proverb says, than for the person too self-satisfied to imagine he could be wrong, and that should sober every reader, because it is a warning aimed less at the obvious fool across the room than at the quiet pride in our own hearts. The fool at least might yet be taught; the man convinced of his own wisdom has bolted the only door learning could enter by.

With verse thirteen the gallery turns and a new figure shuffles into view, the sluggard, and you can almost hear the change of tone. There is a lion in the road, he announces, a fierce lion prowling the open square, and so of course he cannot possibly go out to his work. It is a magnificent excuse precisely because it is so unlikely, and that is the joke: the lazy man will invent a danger grand enough to justify staying exactly where he wants to be. And where he wants to be is bed, for the next verse gives us the unforgettable picture of a door turning on its hinges, swinging this way and that yet never once leaving the doorframe. So the sluggard turns over on his mattress, all motion and no progress, busy at the work of going nowhere at all.

Proverbs 26:15–21 (BSB)

¹⁵ The slacker buries his hand in the dish; it wearies him to bring it back to his mouth. ¹⁶ The slacker is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly. ¹⁷ Like one who grabs a dog by the ears is a passerby who meddles in a quarrel not his own. ¹⁸ Like a madman shooting firebrands and deadly arrows, ¹⁹ so is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I was only joking!” ²⁰ Without wood, a fire goes out; without gossip, a conflict ceases. ²¹ Like charcoal for embers and wood for fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.

The sluggard gets his last two verses here, and they carry his portrait to its perfect, absurd end. He has buried his hand in the dish, the food is right there in front of him, and yet, the proverb says, it wearies him even to lift it back to his own mouth. Laziness has passed beyond refusing hard labor into refusing the smallest effort, until a man would sooner go hungry than raise his hand. And the final touch is the one that ties him to the fool we just left, for this weary, bed-bound, half-starved man is nonetheless quite certain he is wiser than seven people who can give a sensible answer. Self-satisfaction is the thread that runs through every folly in this chapter; the sluggard, no less than the fool, is undone by being pleased with himself.

Then the gallery turns a final time, and now we meet the most serious figure of the three, the person who makes trouble with words. The chapter approaches him carefully, first through the meddler, the man who cannot pass a quarrel that is none of his business without wading into it, and the picture is as vivid as it is painful: he is like someone who seizes a stray dog by the ears, taking hold of a fight he cannot control and will surely be bitten by. Next comes the deceiver who hides his malice behind a grin, wounding his neighbor and then, when caught, protesting that he was only joking. Wisdom will not let him off so lightly, comparing him to a madman flinging firebrands and live arrows about, because harm done in play is harm all the same, and the laughing excuse does nothing to put out the fires he has set. And then comes the great saying at the heart of this whole section, the one that hands us the cure along with the diagnosis: without wood a fire goes out, and without a gossip a quarrel dies down. Every fire needs fuel, and the fuel of most quarrels is the whispering tongue that keeps carrying the offense from ear to ear. Take away the wood and the flames sink; take away the talebearer and the strife that seemed so alive simply starves and dies. The verse that follows says the same thing from the other side, that just as charcoal keeps the embers glowing and wood keeps the fire leaping, so a quarrelsome man exists to keep strife burning. Some people feed fires for a living, and the wise learn to recognize them and to stop handing them wood.

Proverbs 26:22–28 (BSB)

²² The words of a gossip are like choice morsels that go down into the inmost being. ²³ Like glaze covering an earthen vessel are burning lips and a wicked heart. ²⁴ A hateful man disguises himself with his speech, but he lays up deceit in his heart. ²⁵ When he speaks graciously, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. ²⁶ Though his hatred is concealed by deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly. ²⁷ He who digs a pit will fall into it, and he who rolls a stone will have it roll back on him. ²⁸ A lying tongue hates those it crushes, and a flattering mouth causes ruin.

Now the chapter looks straight at the gossip (נִרְגָּן) nirgan, pronounced neer-GAWN. Strong's H5372, a whisperer, gossip, talebearer. This is the word behind “gossip” in verses twenty and twenty-two, and it is a wonderfully vivid one, for it does not mean an open, shouting troublemaker but a nirgan, a whisperer, a murmurer, the person who works quietly and low. The root carries the sense of grumbling and muttering under the breath, and that is exactly the picture: not a loud accuser but a soft one, the voice at your shoulder that says have you heard, the confidence passed along behind a raised hand. That quietness is the whole danger of the word, because the nirgan rarely looks like a firebrand. He looks like a friend sharing something in trust, and his words, as the chapter says, are like choice morsels that slip down easily and lodge deep. Scripture returns to this figure more than once, and always with the same verdict, that the whisperer separates close friends and keeps quarrels alive that would otherwise have died. This chapter’s cure is aimed straight at the nirgan, for when it says that without a talebearer a quarrel ceases, it is telling us that the fire so many conflicts run on is nothing but the fuel of quiet words carried from one person to another, and that the surest way to put such a fire out is simply to stop being, and stop feeding, the whisperer. and tells us why his sin is so hard to resist, and the honesty of it is bracing. The words of a whisperer are like choice morsels, it says, like the tenderest bits of a meal, and they slip down into the inmost parts. That is the terrible appeal of gossip, that it tastes good, that there is a low pleasure in hearing the secret and the scandal, and it goes down easily and lodges deep, so that we remember the whispered thing long after we should have forgotten it. The proverb does not pretend the poison is bitter; it warns us precisely because the poison is sweet. And from the gossip the chapter moves to the colder figure behind so much of this trouble, the man whose whole speech is a disguise. His warm words are like a cheap glaze brushed over a common clay pot, a bright coating that hides the coarse and brittle thing beneath, for behind the burning, eager lips sits a wicked heart. Do not believe him when he speaks graciously, the proverb says plainly, for his gracious words are the coating and his heart is full of things too many to count.

Yet the chapter does not leave us afraid of the deceiver, for it ends by promising that the disguise cannot last. However carefully a man conceals his hatred under deception, his wickedness will be brought out into the open before the whole assembly, dragged at last into the light he worked so hard to avoid. And then wisdom seals the whole matter with one of its oldest and surest pictures, the picture of the trap that turns on its maker: the man who digs a pit to catch another will fall into it himself, and the man who rolls a heavy stone to crush someone below will feel it roll back down upon him. The deceit a person builds to harm his neighbor becomes, in the end, the very thing that destroys him. So the chapter closes on the tongue, where so much of its trouble has lived, telling us the plainest truth of all: a lying tongue hates the very people it wounds, and a mouth full of flattery, for all its smoothness, works ruin. From the fool who will not learn to the sluggard who will not rise to the deceiver who will not tell the truth, the chapter has shown us folly in three faces, and it leaves us wiser chiefly in this, that we can now see each of them coming.