How Proverbs Helps Us to Speak Wisely

Words carry weight. In the fourth century, the boundary line between orthodoxy and heresy crossed through a single letter, as seen in homoousios (Christ is of the “same substance” as the Father, the formulation that appears in the Nicene Creed) versus homoiousios (Christ is of “like substance” as the Father).^[1] Even more significantly, in the first century Jesus upheld the importance of each letter in every word of the Law (Matt. 5:18 and Luke 16:17).

1. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 139–140. For a historical survey of the “Nicene Crisis” in theology and its aftermath, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 231–240.

Words also wield power. Depiction of the wild and untamable tongue arrests every reader of James 3:5–8 and emphatically underscores that few Christians should aspire to be teachers (Jas. 3:1). Indeed, false teachers and false prophets “speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord,” (Jer. 23:16) with the result that they lead people so far away from God as even to forget God’s name (Jer. 23:27). In contrast to the evil effect of false teachers’ use of words, words can be a powerful force for good. God’s word is uniquely potent, in the Old Testament described as “like fire” and “like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces” (Jer. 23:29), and in the New Testament described as “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb. 4:12)

In view of the weight and power of words, Christians should seek wisdom to ensure that our use of words is “gracious, seasoned with salt.” (Col. 4:6) It should go without saying that this word-seasoning wisdom must come from Scripture. Fear of the Lord drives readers to the book of Proverbs, which both begins (Prov. 1:7) and ends (Prov. 31:30) with reverence toward God.^[2] Delving deeper into Proverbs, the following sections of this brief article provide a sketch of some of the book’s literary devices, show how Proverbs would have us speak and not to speak, and then consider the seeming quandary of Proverbs 26:4–5.

2. Founded upon fear of the Lord, attaining biblical wisdom is not at all “a great common quest with men and women of all faiths and in every land,” as implied in Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 33.

The Form of Teaching in Proverbs

To prepare ourselves to receive the teaching of Proverbs with reverence as the biblical authors intend, Christians should become familiar with the book’s literary devices.^[3] For example, Proverbs employs metonymy, in which the mouth, lip, and tongue represent the act of talking. These speech organs themselves are not actually in view; they are stand-ins for the act of speech. Hence the warning against foolish speech is all too clear in Prov. 18:6: “A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating.”

3. Alter provides a very readable treatment of the literary devices in Proverbs in Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 163–184

In addition, Proverbs figuratively employs simile (“his speech is like a scorching fire.” Prov. 16:27) and metaphor (“The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life,” Prov. 10:11) to describe the unwise or wise use of words through dramatic imagery. In these images, fire and water are not the point, but Proverbs invites readers to consider the scorching of fire and the flowing of water and then to relate these acts poetically to speech.

At times, Proverbs jarringly personifies speech such that it seems to act autonomously, as in Prov. 25:15, “. . . and a soft tongue will break a bone.” Personification focuses readers’ attention upon the effects of speech, as in Prov. 15:1, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Perhaps the most renowned personification in Proverbs is that of wisdom, whose figurative speech encourages wise behavior (see Proverbs 8).^[4]

4. Personification is a literary device that “(endows) things or abstractions with life.” See John Arthos, “Personification,” page 612 in Alex Preminger, ed., Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965). Unfortunately, the modern imagination has hyper-personified a “Lady Wisdom” character out of the abstract concept of wisdom, which has feminine grammatical gender aligning with its form as a Hebrew noun. See Geoffrey Turner, “‘Wisdom’ and the Gender Fallacy,” ExpTim 121 (2009): 121–125. Some Bible translations such as the esv also unnecessarily personify folly in Prov. 9:13 as a counterpart to wisdom, while the lsb follows the Hebrew grammar of the verse and reads “woman of foolishness.”

Readers of Proverbs should expect frequent encounters with parallelism, in which leading line ideas develop and intensify, specify, or contrast in some way in the second. One immediately notes the contrast in Prov. 13:1: “A wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.” Readers should notice the “good/bad” distinction and dig deeper, noting also the intensification from “instruction” to “rebuke.” In Hebrew the semantic ranges of these terms overlap, suggesting that the “wise son” is on the way to becoming a “scoffer” if he does not heed his father’s training. A similar teaching, presented in “bad/good” order, is Prov. 15:5: “A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent.” Taken together, these two sayings teach that a wise and prudent person is not only able to endure rebuke and reproof but also receives critique and contemplates its implications.

Speaking and Not Speaking

Proverbs teaches its readers both directly and indirectly about speech in every chapter. Hence Proverbs lends itself well to a thematic study on speaking wisely. A survey of direct teaching on speaking and not speaking appears below.

When read horizontally across the columns of the table above, much of Proverbs’s positive instruction about wise speech finds its corresponding opposite in the negative instruction about how not to speak, for speaking in such ways entails speaking like a fool. For example, the righteous character extolled in Proverbs 23:16—“My inmost being will exult when your lips speak what is right”—contrasts sharply with the deficient character decried in Proverbs 4:24, “Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.” Proverbs often contrasts foolishness and wisdom within a single verse, as in Proverbs 12:18, “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

Another way to take in the teaching within this table is to read the table vertically, observing positive and negative instruction about speech separately. Accordingly, to summarize how Proverbs instructs how to speak, Christians should speak with the right words, at the right time, and with restraint. An example of this teaching is Proverbs 29:11, “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.” A wise person’s speech will be filled with honesty and integrity, as seen in Proverbs 19:1, “Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.” Furthermore, Christians should speak what is acceptable and wise, a teaching epitomized in Proverbs 10:32, “The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse.” The wise speak what is from God (Prov. 16:1) in order to bless (Prov. 11:11) and to heal (Prov. 12:18). The wise speak righteous words (Prov. 8:8) thoughtfully (Prov. 20:25), with kindness (Prov. 31:26), gently and softly (Prov. 15:4). Their speech brings gladness or good news, as in Proverbs 25:25, “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” Christians should generally speak graciously, for Proverbs 16:24 reads, “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” Proverbs demands opening one’s mouth for the cause of righteousness in Proverbs 31:8–9. Sweetness of speech receives commendation in Proverbs 16:21, “The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.” Finally, regarding religious behavior and speech, Proverbs 15:8 teaches, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.”

Wise Response to Foolishness

An overwhelming impression conveyed by the chart and the following summaries above is that wise and foolish speech stand poles apart in Proverbs. Christians should study each passage in depth and in the context of the entire book of Proverbs to gain an understanding of wise speech (and how and why to avoid foolish speech) as those who live wise lives. An example of such study appears below, centering upon Proverbs 26:4–5, a passage that at first glance appears to contain a stark contradiction.

⁴ Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself.
⁵ Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own eyes.

In response, readers naturally ask themselves, “What should a wise person do?” According to a modern, defeatist approach to the passage, Prov. 26:4–5 teaches “You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” There is no right response to the fool.

However, offering up a no-win scenario conflicts with the pattern of instruction that Proverbs attests for itself. The book’s introduction emphasizes that studying Proverbs will lead not to unresolved paradoxes but to understanding: “Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands gain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.” (Prov. 1:6–7) Furthermore, the literary unit of Prov. 26:1–12 focuses almost entirely upon how properly to deal with fools. Simply put, both verses 4 and 5 must simultaneously be true.^[5]

5. The “according to” preposition appears in the same grammatical slot in the parallelism of verses 4 and 5 but serves different purposes in each verse. This point and the insights of the following paragraph derive from Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15–31, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 348–349.

Verse 4 teaches how not to respond to a fool. Wise response must not be “according to” (in the manner of) his folly. Therefore, the wise person avoids becoming a fool himself. Yet the reader may ask, “Then how must a wise person respond to a fool?” Verse 5 answers. Wise response must be “according to” (directed at) his folly, to avoid letting the fool believe he is wise in his own eyes. Accordingly, the chapter then (in Prov. 26:12 and 16) warns of danger whenever someone believes he is wise in his own eyes: a not-too-subtle admonishment for those who believe they have mastered wise living according to Proverbs.^[6]

6. Interestingly, treatment of the apparent contradiction in Prov. 26:4–5 does not appear in Walter C. Kaiser et al., Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996).

Conclusion

According to 2 Timothy 3:16–17, as part of “all Scripture,” Proverbs is “inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” May Proverbs do its work today, molding us to become people of wisdom, people who speak wisely.