Biblion Bible Commentary
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Where There Is No Wood, the Fire Goes Out
Proverbs 26:17-28
17 Like one who grabs a dog’s ears is one who passes by and meddles in a quarrel not his own. · WEB
The chapter closes on the man who makes trouble by talking, and the fire he starts is shown to have a fuel supply.
The run opens with a picture of pointless risk: Like one who grabs a dog’s ears is one who passes by and meddles in a quarrel not his own. A man who takes hold of a strange dog that way has committed himself to a position. He cannot maintain it and he cannot safely abandon it.
The next comparison excuses nothing. A man who deceives his neighbor and then says Am I not joking? is like a madman who shoots torches, arrows, and death. The claim to have been joking is quoted as the standard defense. It is treated as an aggravation rather than a mitigation. The injury has already been done, and the joke is offered afterward.
Then the run's central image, and it is mechanical: For lack of wood a fire goes out. Without gossip, a quarrel dies down. A quarrel is described as a combustion that requires continuous fuel. Nobody has to extinguish it. The fuel has only to stop arriving. And the man who supplies it is named in the next verse: As coals are to hot embers, and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindling strife.
Gossip is then described as a sensation: The words of a whisperer are as dainty morsels, they go down into the innermost parts. The verse is repeated word for word from earlier in the collection Proverbs 18:8, and the repetition is the collection's way of underlining. What makes it dangerous is that it is pleasant. And that it does not stay on the surface.
The last comparisons are about the gap between a surface and what is under it. Like silver dross on an earthen vessel are the lips of a fervent one with an evil heart — a cheap pot given a coating that looks like silver. Warm speech is described as a plating. The verse after it says how long the plating lasts. A man may speak graciously with seven abominations in his heart, and his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.
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