CHAPTER 26

                ¹Like snow in the summer, like rain in the harvest,

                    so honor is unfit for a fool.

                ²As a bird for wandering, as a swallow for flight,

                    so a groundless curse won’t come to pass.

                ³A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,

                    and a rod for the back of fools.

                ⁴Do not answer a dolt by his folly

                    lest you, too, be like him.

                ⁵Answer the dolt by his folly,

                    lest he seem wise in his own eyes.

                ⁶He cuts off his own legs, drinking outrage,

                    he who send words by a fool.

                ⁷Thighs hang slack on the lame

                    and a proverb in the mouth of fools.

                ⁸Like one binding a stone in a sling,

                    so he who gives a fool honor.

                ⁹A thorn comes up in the hand of a drunk

                    and a proverb in the mouth of fools.

                ¹⁰A master brings all things about,

                    but who hires a fool hires vagabonds.

                ¹¹Like a dog going back to his vomit

                    a dolt repeats his folly.

                ¹²Have you seen a man wise in his own eyes?

                    There is more hope for the fool than for him.

                ¹³The sluggard says, “A young lion is on the road,

                    a lion is out in the squares.”

                ¹⁴A door turns on its hinge,

                    and a sluggard on his bed.

                ¹⁵The sluggard buries his hand in the dish,

                    he cannot bring it back up to his mouth.

                ¹⁶The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes

                    than seven who answer with good sense.

                ¹⁷Like one who seizes the ears of a passing dog

                    is he who mixes in with a quarrel not his.

                ¹⁸Like a lunatic shooting deadly firebrands

                    ¹⁹is a man who deceives his neighbor

                          and says, “Why, I was joking.”

                ²⁰When there is no wood, a fire goes out,

                    and without a grumbler, strife falls silent.

                ²¹Coal for embers and wood for fire

                    and a belligerent man to stir up quarrel.

                ²²A grumbler’s words are like pounding

                    and they go down to the belly’s chambers.

                ²³Silver with dross glazed on pottery

                    are ardent lips and an evil heart.

                ²⁴By his lips a foe dissembles

                    and within he lays out deceit.

                ²⁵Though he makes his speech fair, do not trust him,

                    for seven loathsome things are in his heart.

                ²⁶Who covers hatred in deception,

                    his evil will be exposed to all.

                ²⁷Who digs a pit will fall in it,

                    and who rolls a stone, it will come back on him.

                ²⁸A lying tongue hates those it crushes,

                    and a smooth mouth pushes one down.

CHAPTER 26 NOTES

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1. Like snow in the summer. This is part of a whole series here of riddle-form one-line proverbs. These are cast either as a paradoxical or a puzzling image in the first verset—in this instance: what could possibly be as anomalous as snow in a warm season?—or as an image so self-evident that the listener wonders why it should be mentioned (for example, verses 3, 7, 14, 20).

2. a bird . . . a swallow. Just as these winged creatures by their nature fly away, a groundless curse will not “come down on” its intended object but will dissipate, fly away.

4–5. Do not answer a dolt . . . / Answer the dolt. Ingenious exegetical effort has been exercised to set these two contradictory proverbs in a dialectic or complementary relationship with each other. It is more plausible to assume that they were bracketed together editorially because of the similarity of formulation while they reflect two quite different and originally independent perspectives. The first proverb counsels us to avoid contention with a fool because we are liable to get entangled in his own misguided or confused terms (“by [or according to] his folly”). The second proverb urges us to answer the fool so that he is compelled to recognize what a fool he is. In this English version, kesil, generally rendered as “fool,” has been translated as “dolt” because the word for “folly” here, iwelet, is an entirely different term.

6. He cuts off his own legs, drinking outrage. In this proverb, the riddle image is especially violent: like a man who terribly mutilates himself is he who entrusts a message to a fool.

8. binding. With the Septuagint, the translation reads tsorer, “binding” or “one who binds,” instead of the Masoretic tseror, “bundle.” The relation of image to referent is not entirely clear. Fox’s explanation is that giving a fool honor “arms” him to do harm to others, like the loading of a slingshot with a stone.

9. A thorn comes up in the hand of a drunk. Presumably, he is staggering about in his drunken stupor and thus thrusts his hand unawares against thorns.

a proverb in the mouth of fools. This means that either they will pronounce a warped proverb that may hurt others or, lacking the wisdom to pronounce wise sayings, in their effort to do so they will shame or do harm to themselves. The latter option may be more likely.

10. A master brings all things about, / but who hires a fool hires vagabonds. The Hebrew of the received text is obscure, but the sundry attempts to emend it involve major surgical operations on the text with no more than scant support in the ancient versions. This translation follows the general outline of the construction proposed in the New Jewish Publication Society translation.

11. Like a dog going back to his vomit. This is another case of a violent, and arresting, riddle image in the first half of the line.

13. The sluggard says. This proverb is a virtual doublet of 22:13—see the comment there. The Hebrew uses two synonyms for “lion,” and the translation resorts to a familiar fallback by rendering the first term, shaḥal, as “young lion.”

14. A door turns on its hinge. This is a particularly witty deployment of a seemingly obvious image for the riddling part of the line. A door, of course, turns on its hinge; but then we are invited to link that to the sluggard, turning from one side to the other in bed and going nowhere, like the door. We may also imagine the door opening and shutting, with people going in and out, while the sluggard remains in bed.

15. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish. This proverb duplicates 19:24. See the comment there.

17. seizes the ears of a passing dog. The simile has a special edge because dogs were not domesticated in ancient Israel but rather wandered outside as semiferal scavengers. The vivid implication is that a person who mixes into someone else’s quarrel is liable to get badly bitten.

mixes in. The translation reads mitʿarev for the Masoretic mitʿaber (“becomes angry”).

18. lunatic. There is some question about the precise meaning of the Hebrew term.

deadly firebrands. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “sparks, arrows, and death.” “Arrows and death” may be a hendiadys for “deadly arrows.”

22. A grumbler’s words. This is another doublet. See 18:8.

23. ardent lips. An emendation of the first consonant of the Hebrew word rendered as “ardent” (or “burning”) yields “smooth lips,” which is the reading of the Septuagint.

25. speech. Literally, “voice.”

26. to all. Literally, “in the assembly”—that is, in public.

28. A lying tongue hates those it crushes. The tongue is a synecdoche for the liar, but it accords with the potent agency assigned to speech in Proverbs that the tongue should be the subject of both verbs here. What the proverb seems to have in mind is a common psychological mechanism in which the victimizer comes to hate or despise the very person to whom he does wrong, perhaps feeling contempt because the victim has so pathetically exposed himself to harm. For a vivid sexual instance in the Bible, see the story of Amnon and Tamar in 2 Samuel 13.

a smooth mouth. The reference is obviously to smooth speech, but the agency of the body part, as with the tongue in the first verset, is important for the poetic effect.