Proverbs 19, continued

Peter J. Leithart, November 02, 2007

INTRODUCTION
Waltke points out that alternating verses of this section describe undisciplined and wayward sons and who bring evil to themselves and all those who surround them. The passages progress from the sluggard (v. 24) to the shameful son (v. 26) to the false witness (v. 28) to the brawler (20:1). The scope of damage also widens as well: The sluggard harms himself, the shameful son hurts his parents, a false witness undermines justice and damages the society, and a brawler threatens everyone in his vicinity.

The intervening verses deal with various forms of correction of false sons and mockers. When scoffers are struck, the simple learn a bit of wisdom. Sons who refuse to listen to discipline will lack knowledge (v. 27). Scoffers and fools are going to suffer beatings (v. 29). Waltke points out that there are verbal links between corresponding verses. "Son" connects verses 26-27, "judgment" links 28-29, and the whole unit is held together by repeated reverences to mockery (vv. 25, 28, 29, 20:1).

Mockery has no doubt always been present; Solomon recognized the evil of this habit in his own time. In our day, this continues to be a cultural and personal problem. Some people, including Christians, make mockery a primary mode of discourse and a primary stance in life. They can hardly talk without adding a snide aside to every sentence. Our culture encourages such mockery. Men and women get paid massive amounts of money to make fun of authority figures, celebrities, sometimes religion. Modern culture makes criticism primary, and the criticism often takes a dismissive form. There are, of course, practices and persons that deserve mockery, and the Bible sometimes encourages mockery. But something is wrong when the primary mode of discourse becomes one of scoffing.

Though not precisely the same as mockery, cynicism is often allied with it. Dick Keyes defines cynicism as "seeing through and unmasking positive appearances to reveal the more basic underlying motivations of greed, power, lust and selfishness. It says that every respectable public agenda has a hidden private agenda behind it that is less noble, flattering, and moral." Keyes points out that cynicism often takes humorous forms: "Much of the power of cynicism comes through wit and humor. To question the truth claims of cynical judgments often requires and awkward and unnatural shift of your whole state of mind or of the momentum of any given conversation. Imagine questioning the truth of some of the claims of the political satire on Saturday Night Live. You may object that this is just light entertainment, and so of course you cannot ‘argue' with caricatures as if it was serious political discussion. But that is just the point. It is entertainment, but nonetheless is powerful in communicating ideas and impressions about important subjects and people." Satire has an important place in popping the pretentious bubbles of the pompous, but that kind of satire requires a firm moral outlook. Keyes asks, "what if a pervasive cynicism has made ideals themselves suspect and included in the satire?" Then we have entered the realm of mockery, and it is corrosive in various ways, as Solomon makes clear in these verses.

PROVERBS 19:24
Verse 24 contrasts sharply with the preceding verse. The one who fears Yahweh is satisfied in his sleep, because the fear of Yahweh leads to life. The sluggard is not one who fears Yahweh, and so he lives in perpetual dissatisfaction. The sluggard dips his hand in the dish to retrieve his food, but he gets tired of bringing the hand back up over and over and over again (26:15), so he stops and leaves his hand in the dish.

Laziness may seem a slight fault, but the Proverbs don't treat it that way. The sluggard is on his way to nothing (Proverbs 13:4; 20:4). His desires are not satisfied, and he is on the road to death (21:25). He lives in fear (22:13; 26:13), and is described as a man who "lacks sense" (24:30). He is arrogantly confident of his own opinion, since he has never had to test his opinions and ideas against the sharp edges of actual life (26:16). In the context of Proverbs 19, sloth is the first stage of a progression that leads to shame, disgrace, iniquity, brawling. The church has been right on target in describing sloth as a "deadly sin."

As Karl Barth pointed out in one of the great modern discussions of the sloth, sloth makes us inhuman because it means that we keep our distance from others to avoid the difficulty and hard work of actually serving our neighbor. Jesus is God made man to be for man, and in the gospel, we are called (Barth says) to "participate, as thankful recipients of His grace, in the humanity actualized in Him, to share this humanity with a concrete orientation on the fellow-man, the neighbor, the brother. To receive His Holy Spirit is to receive this direction and accept this summons." Yet, in our sloth we reject this summons: We will "to be man without and even in opposition to his fellow-man." Sloth is the root of all sins of omission, all failures to do good to one others. Sloth is a rejection of love, disobedience to Paul's exhortation to "be devoted to one another in brotherly love . . . not sluggish in diligence" (Romans 12:10-11).

PROVERBS 19:25
Verse 25 describes the ancillary effects of dealing with the scoffer or mocker. A scoffer deserves to be "struck" or "flogged," and for him that is an appropriate punishment. That may not help the scoffer himself, but according to Solomon it may help observers. The "simple" or "naïve" is not yet determined in his folly or mockery, and if he sees where scoffing leads – ie, to blows and floggings – he may turn back from his way in time to save himself. He may become shrewd. It takes that much to get through to a simpleton.

But the one with understanding or discernment doesn't require blows to learn his lesson. A verbal correction or reproof is all that is necessary for the one of understanding to discern knowledge. The Hebrew uses the same root twice in the second half of this verse: "one with understanding" is the niphal participle of BYN, and "will discern" is the qal (possibly hifil) imperfect of the same verb. This makes the dynamic that Solomon describes even clearer: Reprove the understanding, he will understand knowledge. That is, the understanding have understanding added to them. As the Proverbs say elsewhere, wisdom is as easy for the wise as folly is to the foolish. As Jesus says, him who has, to him will more be given. Understanding is a circular process; we need understanding to gain understanding, and the more understanding we gain the more we are in a position to understand more.

PROVERBS 19:26
In the escalating rebellion of the fool, verse 26 moves from sluggard to shameful son. The verse is chiastically constructed, as Waltke points out: "He ruins father and drives out mother the son shameful and disgraceful." The text pictures the situation: Father, mother, and son are imprisoned between ruination and shame. The assault may be, as Waltke says, an assault on property, but the object of the attack is still the father. Ruining a father's substance is tantamount to an Oedipal assault on his person. Father and mother are one flesh; therefore, ruining the father is destroying the mother.

This assault may arise from laziness – that is, there may be a direct link between the sluggard of verse 24 and the shameful son of verse 26. The lazy son may be so uncaring about his own and his father's stuff that he leaves it in ruins. The assault may also take the less overt form of rebelling against the instruction and advice of parents. A son who refuses to listen to his father and mother might as well attack and drive them away (v. 27).

The great counter-example of this is Jesus, the true Son. He does not assault or rebel against His Father, but obeys Him to the uttermost. Though charged with being a rebellious and disgraceful son, Jesus in fact glorifies his Father. And instead of driving away His mother, He draws her to Himself, as a new Israel.

PROVERBS 19:27
This verse is paired with the previous one by the reference to the son, and indicates one way that the situation in verse 26 might come about. How can a son get to the point of ruining his father, driving away his mother, and bringing disgrace on himself. He is on this path when he stops listening to discipline. As is frequently evident in Proverbs, it's not enough for parents to carry out discipline; there is responsibility on the part of children to receive discipline without resentment, anger, or resistance.

Solomon uses the common verb "hear" (shema), which likely includes a reference to the Shema of Israel, the great confession of God's unity and the demand that Israel obey Him with heart, mind, and strength. This shema of Israel is mediated to the son through his parents, and he has to listen if he is going to have knowledge and live. Verse 27 also has a more corporate dimension: Israel is Yahweh's son who has to "hear" what Father Yahweh says, and if they cease hearing they will lack knowledge. Israel does in fact stop listening, closing his ears to his Father's voice, and strays from knowledge. Jesus, though, is again the true Son, the only one to keep the Shema and listen to His Father, and He brings true knowledge.

PROVERBS 19:28-29
From the shameful son, Solomon moves to the "witness of Belial" who undermines justice and judgment (mishpat) by his words. The second half of the verse says that the mouth of the wicked "swallows iniquity." Stylistically, this forms a pun with the first part of the verse: The witness is a man of "Belial" and the verb for "swallow" is bl'. But the image is odd: It seems more fitting to say that the mouth of the wicked spread out or spew iniquity, or that iniquity flows from the mouth of the wicked. Perhaps the image is, as Waltke suggests, that the wicked mouth savors iniquity so much that it swallows it whole (contrast v. 24). Alternatively, it might describe the effects of his wicked mouth: He's going to have to swallow the consequences.

Again in verse 29 Solomon describes the harsh discipline that will be meted out to scoffers and mockers. They will have to suffer blows, blows made for the backs of scoffers.

PROVERBS 20:1
Finally, the progression of mockery and folly comes to a climax in this description of the drunkard. As Deuteronomy also says, the rebellious son who is to be executed by the community is a "drunkard and wine-bibber," and this is the final conclusion to which the sluggard comes. The mockery and the brawling are here attributed to the wine and "strong drink" themselves, and an "error" in relation to these good gifts is not wise. How one handles the dangerous goods that God gives is a crucial test of their wisdom.