Proverbs study: who is a fool?

The Proverbs describes a fool as someone who lives a life contrary to or in denial of God. I know - it’s easy to assume that the use of this title belittles a whole group of people. This is why it’s important to dig into the historical context for how it was used.

This is another great example of how so much in the Bible gets misconstrued. It makes sense, right? Even one generation from the next has difficulty understanding how the other behaves, talks and thinks. Things change really quickly over even one generation of time. You can imagine a 1,500-year gap would require a much deeper dive into understanding the history, culture and context of the time it was written. 

Today, we use this word to refer to people who are dumb or lacking foresight. It’s used as an insult. 

Psalm 1:22b says, “And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge? The word ‘fools’ here is translated in Hebrew as ‘kesil’, which means someone who lacks wisdom. 

Solomon certainly is not using this verbiage as a demeaning insult, rather He uses it to describe someone who doesn’t know God. We know from this study so far that to know God is to know wisdom, therefore to not know God is the opposite of wisdom: foolishness.

Remember, Solomon is passing along insight to his sons on how to navigate through life avoiding foolishness and instead pursuing godly wisdom. He categorizes a few different ways people walk into folly when they turn away from God that gets them into trouble. We’ll go through just a few: the perverse, simple and scoffer.

Perverse or Twisted

The foolishness of man ruins his way, and his heart rages against the Lord. - Proverbs 19:3

The word “ruin” means to twist or pervert, or ‘seleph’ in Hebrew. In fact, “perverted” is mentioned many times in Proverbs. Upon closer look, their Hebrew meanings aren’t all the same. There’s several different Hebrew words used for it, but they all refer to someone who has turned away from wisdom.

Both ‘seleph’ and ‘iqqesh’, have a similar meaning: to distort or twist. Meaning, taking truth and bending it to fit their own desire. Other similar translations stem from this idea of distortion, how it affects our desires (avah), deceit (kizev) and general moral corruption (rish-ah). 

As Christians, we are tempted to twist God’s truth to fit our own wishes. We live in foolish things instead of the righteousness that God breathes in us. We do this because we’ve forgotten who God is and start to assume His role when we pause our pursuit of His wisdom (Proverbs 4:5).

The Proverbs describe how this perverse or twisted spiritual state only leads us further away from God and deeper entangled into foolishness. Making what is right and wrong difficult to distinguish. 

Don’t be fooled. Bended truth ceases to be true at all. And is worse than being outright false, it’s deceptively cloaked in a trusting exterior. 

This takes shape when the people who seem to have God all figured out have twisted His character and created their own false and poisoned fruit. And although more hidden than those who are more outwardly living a life apart from God, they will deceive themselves into a relationship with Him. Most of the time, this isn’t intentional. They’ve lost their way, clinging to the assurance they’re sure they have. 

To be honest with you, this person is one big motivator for why I write. My heart aches to show them the beauty they’re missing in who God is. My heart also aches for those they’ve influenced to leave God because of their loud, false and sometimes hypocritical religion. 

I digress. 

Simple-Minded (post: Proverbs 1:32 and draw comparison between Psalm 19:7)

How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? - Proverbs 1:22a

Solomon is saying that those who don’t listen to God’s wisdom are lovers of simplicity. Both the words ‘naive’ and ‘simple-minded’ are the same word in Hebrew: ‘pthiy’. Which describes someone who is easily persuaded and lacking discernment or foresight. 

Isn’t it so much simpler to not listen to God? Isn’t it so much nicer to enjoy our lives without thinking about having to live it for someone else that makes us do hard and uncomfortable things?

It’s so much easier to simply ignore it. To be at peace with our own apathy. When we choose this, we’re merely coasting in the world without a care to think through what life means and why we’re in it.

We’re content to “live and let be”. Never rocking the boat. 

You may live a life that looks like you’re following God but deep down, this is your mindset. You’ll listen to God so long as He doesn’t make you think about or do anything too difficult. So you may end up floating from group to group, or place of ideas that suits your own level of comfortability. But this complacent mindset has a shelf life that can only go on for so long without dying those uncomfortable truths.

Later on in chapter 1 verse 32, “the waywardness of the naive shall kill them, and the complacency of fools shall destroy them.” God cannot be ignored. If you chose to ignore His wisdom, you will one day have to come to terms with those decisions. 

Scoffer 

A scoffer does not love one who reproves him, he will not go to the wise. - Proverbs 15:12

‘Luts’ is the Hebrew word for ‘scoffing’. It refers to someone who ridicules or mocks God.It often refers to an arrogant or boastful claim against godly wisdom. It’s used only 27 times in the Bible, 18 of which comes from Proverbs alone.

Ah, yes those who scoff God. There’s many very obvious people and groups of people you may instantly think of. Less apparent, are those who boldly claim Jesus’ love while directly disregarding His wisdom. They’ve made God about themselves. 

So damaging to both parties, the scoffer and those impacted by them. The moment we make God about ourselves, we miss Him entirely. And we start to believe that we had something to do with our righteousness as a Christian. 

We learn from Proverbs that a scoffer isn’t teachable. Their arrogance has made them completely blind to wisdom coming anywhere other than themselves. They may listen to wisdom, but they won’t regard it. Scoffers hate reproof. In fact, Solomon advises we not even engage with the scoffer in Proverbs 9:8.

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Will you choose to ‘love simplicity’ or ‘scoff’ at the truth? If you choose to swim into the depths of the knowledge of God, fasten up. It will truly be the most rewarding pursuit of your life.

We have to reflect within ourselves to see if we say we’re open to godly wisdom or maybe we’re completely shut off to it completely. We’ll talk more on the value of reproof next week - stay tuned.