Answer a Fool or Not?
The book of Proverbs contains many interesting proverbs, some that are not easy to understand. Perhaps because we’re missing the cultural context of a few thousand years, or just because the advice the proverb is encouraging may seem counter-intuitive, sometimes the meaning or intent of a proverb can be lost on us. One of the hardest pairs of parables to potentially understand are found in 26:4-5.
Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
A surface reading of these two proverbs immediately presents us with a problem: They are telling us to do two incompatible things, to both answer and not answer a fool according to his folly. And they both come with warnings if we fail to do either. If we answer a fool according to his folly, we will become like the fool, but if we don’t answer a fool according to his folly, the fool will think he’s actually wise. What are we to do with this seemingly irreconcilable set of verses?
One thing to consider is that proverbs, despite their short and pithy structure, are not always as simple to understand as they are to read. Oftentimes there is a lot of wisdom behind these short statements, much more than one might think can be packed in so few words. The book of Proverbs even warns us to this effect, that there is mental work to be done to pull apart and understand the proverbs of the book:
Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. (1:5-6)
We are told that it takes effort to understand proverbs. And we’re even told that some of the sayings of the wise are riddles, and certainly 26:4-5 seems like a riddle. We are also warned, perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps intentionally) only a few verses later in 26:7, “Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of fools.” There are ways to consume or understand proverbs where we will not benefit from them. We may speak them, but they are useless to us.
Having introduced these verses, I will give my thoughts on how I’ve come to understand these proverbs. I am by no means saying that I have exhausted the wisdom of these proverbs, nor that I may even be correct. But I share this in hopes to share my own wrestling with the “riddles of the wise,” to encourage you to do the same. And if you have further thoughts on these proverbs, please share them with me so that we can grow deeper in wisdom together.
Perhaps the first thing we should consider is what it even means to “answer a fool according to his folly.” It seems to me that it at least could mean responding to a foolish statement or argument in the like-manner it was delivered. It could mean other things too, but I am imagining scenarios that I have been in (I will not say if I was the fool or the one responding to the fool in each of these scenarios):
(1) Someone says something foolish in anger, insulting the other person with a rude name, and then the other responds by insulting back. (2) Someone says something snarky, sarcastic, or dismissive, and then the other responds similarly. (3) Someone brings up an unintelligent objection to something (whether intentionally to derail the conversation, or unintentionally because they do not really understand the topic being discussed), and the other person answers that objection and gets derailed into a pointless topic.
Perhaps you can think of some other scenarios where one might answer a fool according to his folly, but I think those examples will suffice for the purposes of this article.
It seems to me entirely intentional that these two proverbs in 26:4-5 are placed right next to each other. We are intended to see the apparent contradiction. And to me that seems to say that there are times you should answer a fool according to his folly, and there are times you should not, and the consequences of either action should at least partially guide you in which path you should take. Perhaps this is similar to the thoughts in Ecclesiastes, “For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven,” (3:1) sometimes you ought to answer a fool according to his folly, and sometimes you should not.
And again, I think, the desired outcome of a particular conversation or interaction dictates when you should consider doing one over the other. The warning to not answer a fool according to his folly says that you will become like the fool himself. You will devolve into a fool, and then you’ll just be two fools arguing with each other. I think my first example shows this in action. If someone begins to call you rude names or yell at you in anger, and then you respond by calling them names, you’ve done nothing other than become the same kind of fool as the person you’re responding to. We have a saying in English to warn us from this behavior: “Don’t stoop to their level.” Or a more entertaining one, “Don’t wrestle with pigs. You both get filthy and the pig likes it.” Both of these modern proverbs are saying similar things: Don’t answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
So, what would be a scenario when it would make sense to answer a fool according to his folly? Considering my second scenario, where someone says something snarky, sarcastic, or dismissive—I think it is possible (and I stress the word ‘possible’) to respond according to the folly and get the desired result, namely, “lest he [the fool] be wise in his own eyes.” I think this often works best when you have a good relationship with the person you’re talking to. And say they make one of those snarky, sarcastic, or dismissive comments. If you can respond with something similar that shows the foolishness of their objection, then it might be a good, sharp way to show them a direct example of their foolishness. This obviously requires wisdom, wit, and discernment, but it is possible. I think there are a number of times throughout the Bible that godly men engage in this sort of “answering a fool.” Jesus does it, for example, when he criticizes the foolishness of hypocrisy by when he told people to take the log out of their own eye before messing with the speck in their brother’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5). Instead of just saying, “don’t be a hypocrite,” he uses a funny and ridiculous word picture (some people who dislike humor might call it “foolish”) to describe what hypocrites are actually doing when they criticize others. It is a way to use “foolishness” to show the fool that he’s not as wise as he thinks he is.
Those are some of my thoughts on those proverbs. I am certain there is much more wisdom to be gleaned from them upon further study and reflection. Again, I hope my thoughts will be helpful to you in your own study, and if you have additional thoughts (even if you disagree with some of what I’ve shared), I’d welcome your input. “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).
