Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Proverbs · About this commentary
A Friend Loves at All Times
Proverbs 17:1-28
1 Better is a dry morsel with quietness, than a house full of feasting with strife. · WEB
The chapter is preoccupied with what people do to each other, and it ends by pointing out that a fool who says nothing passes for wise.
It opens with a meal, as chapter 15 closed with one: Better is a dry morsel with quietness, than a house full of feasting with strife. The comparison is now sharper. Not herbs against a fattened calf, but a dry crust against a house full of food. The variable is again the atmosphere. The collection keeps insisting that this is what decides whether a table is worth sitting at.
The strongest cluster concerns how quarrels start and how they are ended. He who covers an offense promotes love; but he who repeats a matter separates best friends. Covering here means declining to bring it up again. Repeating is the ordinary destructive act — not slander, simply mentioning it once more. Then the mechanical image: The beginning of strife is like breaching a dam, therefore stop contention before quarreling breaks out. The first trickle through an earth wall is small, correctable, and the last moment at which anything can be done.
What happens when it is not stopped is stated in the run's bleakest verse: A brother offended is more difficult than a fortified city. Disputes are like the bars of a fortress. Reconciling with a wronged relative is compared to taking a walled town, and the comparison runs in the direction of despair. The collection is not pessimistic about people in general. It is realistic about how hard family estrangement is to undo.
Against all of that stands the verse everyone knows: A friend loves at all times; and a brother is born for adversity. The two halves are not the same claim. The friend's mark is constancy across circumstances. The brother's is that the relationship exists for the bad times specifically. He was born for it, which makes trouble the occasion he was always going to be needed for rather than an interruption.
Two verses deal with justice and one is quoted in the law's own language: He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh. Both errors, equally. And a bribe is described exactly as it looks to the man paying it: a precious stone in the eyes of him who gives it; wherever he turns, he prospers. No comment is added. The flat verdict that it perverts justice comes later.
The chapter's last verse is its driest: Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is counted wise. It is a joke and it is also serious advice. It stands at the end of a chapter that has spent twenty-seven verses on the damage words do.
settled What this mark means