10 The proverbs of Solomon.
A wise son makes a glad father,
but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
2 Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,
but righteousness delivers from death.
3 The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry,
but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.
4 A slack hand causes poverty,
but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
5 He who gathers in summer is a prudent son,
but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.
6 Blessings are on the head of the righteous,
but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.1
7 The memory of the righteous is a blessing,
but the name of the wicked will rot.
8 The wise of heart will receive commandments,
but a babbling fool will come to ruin.
9 Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,
but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.
10 Whoever winks the eye causes trouble,
and a babbling fool will come to ruin.
11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life,
but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
12 Hatred stirs up strife,
but love covers all offenses.
13 On the lips of him who has understanding, wisdom is found,
but a rod is for the back of him who lacks sense.
14 The wise lay up knowledge,
but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.
15 A rich man’s wealth is his strong city;
the poverty of the poor is their ruin.
16 The wage of the righteous leads to life,
the gain of the wicked to sin.
17 Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life,
but he who rejects reproof leads others astray.
18 The one who conceals hatred has lying lips,
and whoever utters slander is a fool.
19 When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
20 The tongue of the righteous is choice silver;
the heart of the wicked is of little worth.
21 The lips of the righteous feed many,
but fools die for lack of sense.
22 The blessing of the Lord makes rich,
and he adds no sorrow with it.2
23 Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool,
but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.
24 What the wicked dreads will come upon him,
but the desire of the righteous will be granted.
25 When the tempest passes, the wicked is no more,
but the righteous is established forever.
26 Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes,
so is the sluggard to those who send him.
27 The fear of the Lord prolongs life,
but the years of the wicked will be short.
28 The hope of the righteous brings joy,
but the expectation of the wicked will perish.
29 The way of the Lord is a stronghold to the blameless,
but destruction to evildoers.
30 The righteous will never be removed,
but the wicked will not dwell in the land.
31 The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom,
but the perverse tongue will be cut off.
32 The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable,
but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse.
Section Overview
As discussed in the Overview of Proverbs 10–29, chapters 10–15 contain nearly two hundred sayings regarding wisdom and folly and righteousness and wickedness. More specifically, chapters 10–12 emphasize the relationship of the wicked and the righteous, this relationship being mentioned nearly thirty times in chapter 10 alone. Fox has observed that by comparison to wisdom literature in other ancient cultures—with the possible exception of the Egyptian wisdom of Amenemope—Israel had a far greater interest in the moral concerns of righteousness and wickedness.99
This chapter is also carefully designed to flow naturally from chapters 1–9 by addressing the son several times in 10:1–5 and by closing with an emphasis on the “fear” and “way” of the Lord. In terms of specific content, the chapter mentions several issues, including business transactions, diligence and laziness, and honesty and deceit. Beyond these, however, over half of the verses in the chapter address matters of speech, as emphasized by the frequent repetition of “mouth” and “lips” (cf. Response section).
Section Outline
II.A. Solomon’s Intro to Wisdom: Contrasts of the Wise-Righteous and Wicked-Fools (10:1–15:33)
1. Righteous or Wicked (10:1–12:28)
a. The Wise Son in the Way of Wisdom (10:1–5)
b. Sundry Pairs of Wisdom Sayings (10:6–25)
c. The Righteous Way of the Lord and the Destruction of the Wicked (10:26–32)
Response
Moral Order and the Origins of Evil
With few exceptions chapters 10–15 emphasize the claim that wisdom and righteousness lead to blessings and life, while wickedness and folly lead to suffering and death. The repetition is designed to reinforce the fixed boundaries of the moral order in the created order. As discussed in the Response section to the Overview of Proverbs 10–29, the fall into sin did not change or distort the existence of right and wrong or good and evil, as difficult as these absolutes might be for us to discern or believe in at times.
Still, the pervasiveness of evil and sin in this world makes any idea of a fixed order easy to doubt. Added to that, the long human struggle to define agreeable moral standards for society naturally leads many to be pessimistic about an objective moral order.
Proverbs is well aware of this problem, as can be seen in its many retributive paradoxes and its appeals to a final accounting of justice by Yahweh (cf. 13:12–20; 15:5–12). Coping with the nagging and often overwhelming sense of injustice and evil requires mature wisdom and hope (10:28, 30)—something that has to be learned and practiced. Thus Proverbs does not divert to a theoretical reflection on evil and suffering, as does Job, but rehearses confidence in the fixed order that often seems in question. This point will arise again in the chapters ahead.
But we can still pause and reflect on the relationship between sin, evil, and eternal peace and justice. On this matter we are prone to conflate sin and evil. These two—evil and sin—are clearly related and overlapping, but they are not the same, and this matters both for what it means to gain wisdom in the moral life and also for what has been accomplished in Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection.
In a nutshell we may say that all sin is a failure to do righteousness—to “miss the mark,” as the Greek word is translated. But sin also results in what we call “evil,” the distortion in the world and the absence of “good” that complicate our lives and reinforce our tendencies to sin. We see in the Lord’s Prayer, for example, that Jesus makes a distinction between petitions to “forgive us our debts” and to “deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:12–13).103 Genesis 3 depicts evil and also the entrance of sin into the human race. The serpent’s skepticism and desire to tempt Eve with forbidden fruit—among other things—speaks to the evil structural and social distortion that entered creation and tempted man toward sin and rebellion. Evil structures and the twisting of a good creation make us more likely to sin.
We find a similar concern with structural and social evil in the book of Job. Job’s story makes the point that Job suffers not for his sin but rather as a result of the mysterious power of evil in a fallen world (i.e., the wily ambitions of the “accuser”; ESV “Satan”). It is interesting in this light to note the degree of anxiety about evil in Ecclesiastes (Eccles. 3:17; 11:9; 12:13–14) and the fact that the righteous, for all their virtuosity, do not favor any better than the wicked (Eccles. 7:15–18; 8:14; 9:1–3). Jesus seems to echo both Job and Ecclesiastes when he addresses the problem of evil with respect to the event of the collapse of the tower of Siloam and the man born blind—neither was to be traced to a specific human sin (Luke 13:1–5; John 9:1–4).
Practically speaking, at least two things should be said about evil in the world. First, from the perspective of becoming wise, we know that God designed the world in a way that often seems wild and unpredictable to us, such that not all prosperity and suffering can be tied neatly to moral actions. Still, the moral order of the world stands firm, and it is not given to humans to understand how. To act morally or righteously thus requires us to reason carefully without weighing the immediate consequences too heavily. Obedience, for example, is often met with persecution. As long as the disorder of sin and evil exists in the world, righteous and wicked acts may sometime result in unexpected outcomes.
Second, from the perspective of the gospel, we can affirm that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have not only eradicated the debt of believers’ moral sin but have also begun to destroy the deeper problem of evil in the world. We might say it this way: God conquers the practical outworking of sin on the human level, as well as the evil and cosmic distortion resulting from the fall. In the NT, wisdom in Christ thus takes an important step beyond OT wisdom. It has the same kind of hope in eternal rewards, but it also has the assurance that Christ is undoing the distortion and ambiguity created by sin and evil.
The Power of Words
The dominant emphasis on speech in this chapter also leads us to reflect on the power of human language. An old adage advises, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Proverbs 17:28 speaks a similar truth. Yet, as with all adages, these speak only to one side of the matter. In other words, there are two sides to the power of speech. Positively speaking human speech is life-giving. Well-spoken words are a “fountain of life” (10:11) and “understanding” (v. 13); “The tongue of the righteous is choice silver” (v. 20); “The lips of the righteous feed many” (v. 21); and a mouth “brings forth wisdom” (v. 31; cf. Pss. 49:3; 78:1–2). The principle is repeated often in Proverbs: for example, “The tongue of the wise commends knowledge” (Prov. 15:2); “A gentle tongue is a tree of life” (15:4); and “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (16:24).
These teachings are matched by the destructive power of speech: “The mouth of the wicked conceals violence” (10:6; cf. v. 11); “The mouth of a fool brings ruin near” (v. 14). Similar sentiments abound throughout the book (12:13, 22; 17:4, 28; 18:6–7; 24:2; etc.).
Thus we are left with the fact that speech is an inevitable and necessary part of life and must be used with great caution and discipline: “Whoever restrains his lips is prudent” (10:19; cf. 17:27). Proverbs 26:4–5 contains probably the most memorable sayings that capture the two sides to human speech; one can err by speaking or by not speaking. Wisdom is God’s gift to navigate this challenge.
As noted above, Jesus taught that believers must discipline the heart in order to direct the tongue properly (Matt. 12:34). James, too, warns that “the tongue is a fire” (James 3:6) and “a restless evil” (James 3:8) before going on to instruct his readers to discipline their speech with “wisdom” (James 3:15) that is “pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17). Indeed, the psalmist rightly responds to this same truth in prayer:
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Ps. 19:14; cf. 149:3)Proverbs 10
Proverbs 11