15 A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
2 The tongue of the wise commends knowledge,
but the mouths of fools pour out folly.
3 The eyes of the Lord are in every place,
keeping watch on the evil and the good.
4 A gentle1 tongue is a tree of life,
but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.
5 A fool despises his father’s instruction,
but whoever heeds reproof is prudent.
6 In the house of the righteous there is much treasure,
but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.
7 The lips of the wise spread knowledge;
not so the hearts of fools.2
8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,
but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
9 The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,
but he loves him who pursues righteousness.
10 There is severe discipline for him who forsakes the way;
whoever hates reproof will die.
11 Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord;
how much more the hearts of the children of man!
12 A scoffer does not like to be reproved;
he will not go to the wise.
13 A glad heart makes a cheerful face,
but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.
14 The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge,
but the mouths of fools feed on folly.
15 All the days of the afflicted are evil,
but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast.
16 Better is a little with the fear of the Lord
than great treasure and trouble with it.
17 Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
than a fattened ox and hatred with it.
18 A hot-tempered man stirs up strife,
but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.
19 The way of a sluggard is like a hedge of thorns,
but the path of the upright is a level highway.
20 A wise son makes a glad father,
but a foolish man despises his mother.
21 Folly is a joy to him who lacks sense,
but a man of understanding walks straight ahead.
22 Without counsel plans fail,
but with many advisers they succeed.
23 To make an apt answer is a joy to a man,
and a word in season, how good it is!
24 The path of life leads upward for the prudent,
that he may turn away from Sheol beneath.
25 The Lord tears down the house of the proud
but maintains the widow’s boundaries.
26 The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord,
but gracious words are pure.
27 Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household,
but he who hates bribes will live.
28 The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer,
but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.
29 The Lord is far from the wicked,
but he hears the prayer of the righteous.
30 The light of the eyes rejoices the heart,
and good news refreshes3 the bones.
31 The ear that listens to life-giving reproof
will dwell among the wise.
32 Whoever ignores instruction despises himself,
but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.
33 The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom,
and humility comes before honor.
Section Overview
Proverbs 15 is the sixth and final chapter shaped around the contrasts of wisdom and folly and righteousness and wickedness. Out of almost 180 sayings in these six chapters, all but fourteen are antithetical sayings: “this but that.” Chapters 16–30 will introduce a variety of other types of sayings, such as better-than, litotes, riddles, and synonymous parallels.
As chapter 15 closes this section of the book, it shares many parallels with chapter 10, which began the section. As we will see below, the chapter also holds a central place among three chapters that emphasize the divine name, Yahweh (chs. 14–16).
Many of these Yahweh sayings in chapter 15 echo Proverbs’ key phrase, “the fear of Yahweh.” As seen in the Introduction, this motto has been carefully placed near the seams of the seven sections in the book (1:1–9:18; 10:1–15:33; 16:1–22:16; 22:17–24:34; 25:1–29:27; 30:1–33; 31:1–31). All told, chapter 15 has clearly been edited to provide a smooth transition to a new body of sayings. Cf. comment on 15:28–33 [at v. 33].
The dominant themes in this chapter include wise and foolish speech, humility and openness to instruction, temperance and self-control, and a life centered on Yahweh and his ways. Chapter 15 has also been arranged in a way that repeats major themes within what resembles a chiastic structure—the beginning mirrors the end, with a central section focused on the discipline of human passions.
Section Outline
II.A. Solomon’s Intro to Wisdom: Contrasts of the Wise-Righteous and Wicked-Fools (10:1–15:33) . . .
2. Wise or Foolish (13:1–15:33) . . .
m. Things “Good” and Speech (15:1–4)
n. Authority: Domestic and Divine (15:5–12)
o. Happiness and Contentment (15:13–18)
p. Examples of Speech and Listening (15:19–24)
q. Authority: Domestic and Divine II (15:25–27)
r. Wisdom, Joy, and Listening (15:28–33)
The chapter’s structure can be outlined in greater detail by examining its repeated vocabulary and themes.
TABLE 2.8: Repeated Vocabulary and Themes in Proverbs 15
|
Good |
Heart |
Yahweh |
House, Mother Father, |
Way/Path |
Wisdom, Folly |
Speech, Words |
|
|
vv. 1–4 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
1, 2, 4 |
|||
|
vv. 5–12 |
7, 11 |
8, 9, 11 |
5, 6 |
9, 10 |
5, 7 |
7 |
|
|
vv. 13–18 |
15, 16, 17 |
13, 14 15 |
16 |
14 |
|||
|
vv. 19–23 |
23 |
21 |
20 |
19, 21 |
20, 21, 23 |
23 |
|
|
vv. 24–27 |
25, 26 |
25 |
24 |
26 |
26 |
||
|
vv. 28–33 |
30 |
28, 30, 32 |
29, 33 |
31, 33 |
28, 30 |
Response
Human Desire and Happiness
“Obey your thirst.” In the 1990s the Coca-Cola Corporation coined this slogan for Sprite, their now famous caffeine-free lemon-lime soda. For some readers, that may call up memories of Burger King’s “Have it your way” or Lay’s Potato Chips’ “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Or, in another vein, think of Clairol’s “I’m worth it.” Advertising capitalizes on our desire to feed our appetites and satisfy our desires.
The verses in Proverbs 15:15–18, on the contrary, seek to inculcate virtues of temperance and self-control—to gauge and limit our desires rather than feeding them mindlessly.
Interpreting these sayings can easily lead to errors in either of two directions. First, the disciplining of desire is not what we might call “gnostic” or “dualist.” It does not elevate disembodied or spiritual existence above the body and material things. Creation was very good in the beginning (Gen. 1:31), and so human containers of water, dirt, and life are, in this form, good and holy image bearers of the invisible God. It is therefore fully in God’s design for us to eat and be satisfied (Gen. 2:16; cf. Prov. 24:13).
That said, the pleasures of eating and being sated have to be learned, as unguarded appetites can be lethal (Gen. 2:17; Prov. 25:16). According to Thomas Merton there is, in fact, a secret to enjoying God’s gifts: “It is only when we are detached from created things that we can begin to value them as we really should. It is only when we are ‘indifferent’ to them that we can really begin to love them.”122
Merton points to a deeper, perfidious tendency of our desire. He writes, “The tremulous scrupulosity of those who are obsessed with pleasures they love and fear narrows their souls and makes it impossible for them to get away from their own flesh. They have ended with flesh because they began with it.”123 The creation must be enjoyed in and through the joy and fullness of the Creator, and that has to be learned through fasting and self-discipline.
This leads us to a second error we can make when it comes to taming our desires: attempting to master our bodies and craving by our own strength and the power of our will. The modern craze with weekend sports—be it 10Ks, half-marathons, triathlons—or any manner of holistic-organic super diets too often reflects the pagan narrative of becoming masters of our flesh in the name of pride and glory. There is no small degree of satisfaction found in eating well and completing a physical challenge. But the storyline runs all too often in the wrong direction. To conquer the flesh by the will leads us to boast in the flesh rather than in the Spirit. Indeed, this is Paul’s very point in Romans 8:
The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. . . . For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (Rom. 8:7–9, 13).
We conquer the desires of the flesh through grace. Here is Merton again: “The spirit of man must first subject itself to grace, and then it can bring the flesh into subjection to grace and to itself.”124 So also with Paul’s language, in which God disciplines our desires as we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14).
The supreme model for this process lies in Jesus’ own life and teaching, a point made clear in these words to his disciples: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matt. 16:25–26). Jesus’ lesson on this point is followed by the assurance that he will lead the way for us: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day” (Matt. 17:22–23)—submitting himself to God, dying to self, and rising to new life.
The Goodness and Necessity of Tradition
We have also seen that authority and tradition play a major role in this chapter. G. K. Chesterton once called tradition the “democracy of the dead”—those voices that some people quickly and wrongly discriminate against because they are no longer with us. But all of life in one way or another is lived through tradition. Traditions are those practices and worldviews and values that have been handed down to us. All habits and ideas are, in one way, votes or tips of the hat to one source of authority or another. It is a matter not of whether we have traditions but of which traditions we follow.
As children, our language, our first sense of right and wrong, the foods we eat and prefer, and the places in which we live are all handed down to us without our vote or influence. Apart from these “traditions” we would have no foundation with which to make our way through life in this world.
Tradition, however, is not a singular thing but a cacophony of competing voices around us. Thus tradition is definitely not without its complexities or problems. Merold Westphal offers a threefold framework to help us manage the unavoidability, strengths, and limits of our human traditions.125
First, Westphal describes an “alterity,” or otherness, about tradition. Tradition is a source outside us that allows us perspective. It is like a community that gives us language and the voice that answers the question, “Is it just me, or am I imagining this?” “No man is an Island,” as John Donne’s poem famously observed four centuries ago. Tradition is a parent, coach, and friend that provides the perspective and language we need in order to understand and interpret the world around us.
Second, tradition is always an authority. Traditions are collective voices and ideas that take up a life in our families and communities. Bumper sticker slogans like “Be your own you” and “Question authority” sound independent, objective, and free. But we should be able to see that they are merely voices within our community asserting their own authority, making an appeal for followers as they assent to and build alternative traditions.
In this respect we should grant respect to traditions. Even at their worst they are still efforts to organize and guide. Without them we would be lost in anarchy and meaningless existence. Someone who does not believe this ought to try living without language. It is perhaps that one great tradition to which we unconsciously surrender our allegiance day in and day out.
Third, traditions should be recognized for their fallibility— no tradition gets everything right. This point is really at the heart of the whole book of Proverbs, and of this chapter as well. Wisdom and folly (and Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly) remind us that some traditions are more right than others, and all of them have their limits. No one of us has a God’s-eye view of things. Indeed, the “father” (Prov. 15:5, 20), the “lips of the wise” (v. 7), and “advisers” (v. 22) are all necessary because no person or group has the perfect interpretation of God and the world.
Traditions are fallible because people are fallible. That is why this chapter urges us to listen, show respect, and seek out wise counsel—to test traditions against one another and against God’s revelation, constantly seeking a truer way. I have spent many years in the position of opening up college students’ minds to the fact that their inherited tradition may not be right about everything. It is scary for them, and no doubt for trusting parents as well. We can, of course, retreat into our inherited traditions. In the modern public university there is something to be said for this. The true “breadth” of traditions on offer in the faculty is highly slanted toward a particular set of political agendas. But a good Christian college or university opens up the space to think critically about our traditions, their strengths and their blind spots. A school that does this, even fallibly, is much closer to Proverbs than the person who seeks to retreat to theological and emotional safety.
We should end by saying that tradition does not have to be an old, dead thing, though that is prone to happen. It can be something we live into, renew, and pass on again. When Moses passed on his words in the book of Deuteronomy, he was handing down a living tradition: “It is no empty word for you, but your very life” (Deut. 32:47). This is likewise true of the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God—the tradition that promises eternal life. Jesus and Paul admonished us to teach and lead others as we ourselves have been taught and led (Matt. 28:18–20; 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6; 2 Tim. 2:2). And so, as we attend to this tradition for ourselves, we take on the joyful task of sharing the Jesus tradition with others so that they might believe and have this life (Prov. 15:24).Proverbs 15
Proverbs 16