Proverbs 26 Bible study: Answer a fool

The chapter opens, "Like snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool" (26:1) (tap fool, honor). Fool is kesil, and in Hebrew it comes in every verse from 26:1 to 26:12 except 26:2: eleven times in twelve verses, more than in any other chapter of the Hebrew Bible. Many of these sayings set the fool beside a picture: snow in summer (26:1), "the legs of the lame that hang loose" (26:7), "one who binds a stone in a sling" (26:8), "a thorn bush that goes into the hand of a drunkard" (26:9), and "a dog that returns to his vomit" (26:11) (tap dog). Two of them speak of honor: "so honor is not fitting for a fool" (26:1), and "so is he who gives honor to a fool" (26:8); in Hebrew both end with the same two words, likhsil kavod. Two end with the same line: "so is a parable in the mouth of fools" (26:7, 26:9) (tap parable). Here is what almost everyone misses: the last of these twelve sayings isn't about the fool. It names someone with less hope than a fool: "Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him" (26:12) (tap wise).

Proverbs 26:11→leads to2 Peter 2:20-22

Proverbs says, "As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is a fool who repeats his folly" (Proverbs 26:11). Peter (2 Peter 1:1), in a chapter that warns of "false teachers" (2 Peter 2:1), says, "For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first" (2 Peter 2:20). "For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them" (2 Peter 2:21). "But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turns to his own vomit again,” and “the sow that has washed to wallowing in the mire.”" (2 Peter 2:22). Peter calls it "the true proverb" and doesn't name the book; the WEB words the two differently (returns to his vomit in Proverbs, turns to his own vomit again in 2 Peter), and the sow isn't in Proverbs. What takes the line to Jesus is Peter's own sentence: the knowledge they had escaped through is "the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 2:20). Proverbs says the saying of a fool; Peter applies it to the people his chapter speaks of. Christians read what 2 Peter 2:20-22 says of them in more than one way, and the honest question on 1 Chronicles 28:9 sets out the main views; these notes choose none, and they apply the saying to no one today.

כְּסִילkesilsay ke-SEEL

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "stupid fellow, dullard, fool". "so honor is not fitting for a fool" (26:1). This chapter has it eleven times, in every verse from 26:1 to 26:12 except 26:2, more than any other chapter of the Hebrew Bible; three of those times it is the plural, fools (26:3, 26:7, 26:9). Proverbs has it 49 times in Hebrew. It is the word of Wisdom's "fools hate knowledge" (Proverbs 1:22), and the notes on Proverbs 13 look at it.