Biblion Bible Commentary
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Truthful Lips Endure Forever
Proverbs 12:15-28
15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who is wise listens to counsel. · WEB
The run gathers around the mouth and the temper, and its best-known line is about how long a lie lasts.
It opens with the phrase that recurs across the whole book as its definition of a fool: The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. Not wicked, not ignorant — satisfied. The contrast supplied is not that the wise man doubts himself but that he listens to counsel, which turns the difference into a habit anyone can observe from outside.
The next verse applies it to temper in one of the collection's sharpest observations. A fool shows his annoyance the same day, but one who overlooks an insult is prudent. The timing is the whole saying. Nothing is said about whether the annoyance is justified. What marks the fool is the interval, and what marks prudence is the capacity to let a thing sit.
Speech dominates the rest. A rash word is like the piercing of a sword, and against it the tongue of the wise heals — two medical images, one making a wound and one closing it, with nothing neutral in between. Then a claim about duration: Truth's lips will be established forever, but a lying tongue is only momentary. A lie is not described as wicked here but as short-lived, which is an argument aimed at people who lie for advantage.
Two sayings about the diligent frame the run's practical half. The hands of the diligent ones shall rule, but laziness ends in slave labor — a proverb, not a promise, and read as a general tendency it is simply true. And the sluggard is caught in a domestic detail that carries more than a paragraph could: The slothful man doesn't roast his game. He hunted successfully. He got it home. And there it sits, because the last small step was one step too many. The collection's picture of laziness is rarely a man who does nothing; it is a man who does not finish.
One verse stands apart from the rest and is the kindest in the chapter. Anxiety in a man's heart weighs it down, but a kind word makes it glad. The remedy offered for a heavy heart is not advice, correction or resolve. It is one good sentence from somebody else, and the collection thinks that is worth recording.
settled What this mark means