Proverbs 26
Verses 4-5:
Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you will be like him yourself.Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.
On his blog, Pastor Tim calls this out as an “apparent contradiction“. I thought that was interesting, because I guess it does really look like a contradiction. I didn’t see it that way. The “contradiction” resolved itself pretty nicely in my mind. Here’s what I wrote back:
Hey Pastor Tim,
I saw the “contradiction” in the Proverb, but it actually made pretty good sense to me right off the bat.I think this goes along with what you and the commentator wrote, but the paraphrase I came away with was (26:4) “Do not answer a foolish question with a foolish answer because you’ll be no different than he.”
(26:5) “Answer a foolish question with a wise answer in order to call out the foolishness of that question.”This has been a lot of fun! Thanks for encouraging us to read the Word together.
Hope that makes sense to you.