This is where we land every Sunday, after This Week’s Verse. Each week we pick one verse or question that seems hard, contradictory, or uncomfortable, and I give the best answer I can. Sometimes the answer will settle the matter. Sometimes some doubt will remain in the room, and when that happens I will say so.
She sat in the break room at work while a coworker mocked her faith over lunch, loud enough for the whole table to hear. The jokes were not clever, and she knew it. She also knew exactly how she could answer him, with a quick comment that would make the table laugh at him instead.
She stayed silent and spent the rest of the afternoon feeling like a coward. The next week the same man started again, and this time she answered him back. The table went quiet, he flushed red, and she felt worse than before, as though she had fed a fire instead of putting one out.
That night she opened her Bible looking for guidance and landed on two lines of wisdom placed side by side.
4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
Proverbs 26:4-5 New International Version
or you yourself will be just like him.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.
One said not to answer a fool according to his folly, or you will become like him. The very next line said to answer a fool according to his folly, or he will think himself wise. She read them twice, then put the book down and laughed out loud, not because it was funny, but because it felt like the Bible had just argued with itself.
The Two Verses That Seem to Cancel Each Other
Here is the problem laid out plainly. The first proverb says do not answer. The second says do answer. Both use nearly the same wording, back to back, and each gives a reason that sounds sensible on its own.
If you came to these lines hoping for a simple rule, you would leave frustrated. A rule needs to point in one direction, and these two point in opposite directions.
This is one of the places where skeptics have a fair point. If the Bible is a rulebook, here is a place where the rules appear to conflict. The question is whether it is a rulebook in the first place.
They Sit Together on Purpose
Start with something easy to miss. Whoever collected these sayings placed them next to each other. The people who gathered the proverbs attributed to Solomon were not careless readers, and they could surely see the tension.
More Proverbs of Solomon
25 These are more proverbs of Solomon, compiled by the men of Hezekiah king of Judah:
Proverbs 25:1 New International Version
If they had wanted to hide it, nothing would have been easier than separating the two lines by a few chapters.
Instead, they put them in adjacent verses, almost as though they wanted the reader to stumble over the pair. That kind of placement is a signal, because it suggests that the writer and collectors meant the tension to be noticed, and meant it to teach something.
What Each Verse Is Warning About
Interpreters have offered more than one reading, so I will give the one I find most convincing and mention that others exist.
The first proverb warns about answering a fool on his own terms. If you match his tone, his heat, and his rules for the argument, you slide into his way of thinking and end up looking much like him. This is what happened to the woman in the break room when she swapped one quick insult for another. The point of the warning is that you can lose yourself by trying to win.
The second proverb warns about the opposite danger. Sometimes silence tells a foolish person that his foolishness went unchallenged, and he walks away thinking he made a strong point. Here, the instruction is to answer in a way that shows the claim for what it is, so he is not left admiring his own cleverness.
Read side by side, the two verses are not giving two commands. They describe two real dangers, becoming like the fool and leaving the fool unchallenged, and a wise person has to steer between them.
Wisdom Is Not a Formula
And that leads to the heart of the matter. Proverbs is a different kind of book from a legal code. It is not a list of promises or a set of rules to apply mechanically. It trains a person to see situations clearly, and then to pick the response that fits the situation in front of them.
James wrote to us that anyone who lacks wisdom should ask God for it, and that God gives generously to people who ask.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
James 1:5 New International Version
That advice would be unnecessary if a formula could do the job. A formula can be memorized. Wisdom has to be asked for, again and again, because each situation is slightly new.
For a moment like the break room, two questions help. Is this person actually asking, or only performing for an audience? And who else is listening besides the two of us? Someone who is performing will not be moved by a good argument, so answering may only feed him. A quiet listener at the table who is wondering about faith may need to hear a calm answer. The same sentence can be wise in one setting and foolish in another.
Notice, too, that a third option often exists that neither proverb names. She could have asked him a calm question, such as what he thought was funny about it. That is not exactly silence, and it is not exactly an answer on his terms. It leaves the conversation open and keeps her from being pulled into his tone. This is the kind of creative response wisdom looks for.
Where Some Doubt May Remain
I want to be fair to the person who still finds this unsatisfying. Some people might say that if God inspired the book, He could have made it clearer. That is a reasonable thing to feel, and nothing in this article makes the feeling disappear. But I can also honestly tell you that as you read and study the scriptures, it get clearer and clearer.
My best answer is that the Bible seems to be teaching wisdom here by refusing to hand over a shortcut. If you wanted an algorithm for how to respond to every foolish argument you will ever meet, the Bible does not give you one in these verses, and I do not think it was trying to. What it gives is a pair of warnings and an invitation to ask for discernment.
Is that enough? For me it is, though I understand why it might not be for everyone. If a doubt remains, you are in good company. Honest readers have wrestled with these two lines for a very long time.
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Conclusion
The woman in the break room did not solve the proverbs that night, but she changed what she did the following week. When the same coworker started again, she waited a moment and asked him calmly what exactly he found funny about it. He shrugged, a little thrown, and the lunch moved on. She did not win anything. She also did not walk away feeling smaller than when she sat down.
Wisdom, it turns out, was not hiding in either verse alone. It was in the space between them, in the question she had to ask herself before she opened her mouth.
What is a verse or question that has bothered you, one you would like us to take on in a future Sunday? Tell us in the comments, and I will work through the best ones.
