Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Proverbs · About this commentary
Know the State of Your Flocks
Proverbs 27:18-27
18 Whoever tends the fig tree shall eat its fruit. He who looks after his master shall be honored. · WEB
The chapter ends with farm management, and the reason given for it is that wealth does not last and neither do crowns.
Two verses in this run are about what cannot be seen directly. Like water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man. The only mirror available in that world was a still surface, and it gave a true image to anyone willing to look. And then the appetite that has no floor: Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; and a man's eyes are never satisfied. Wanting is described as bottomless by nature, and the comparison chosen is the grave, which has never yet been full.
One saying is the collection's sharpest test of character and it is easily misread: The crucible is for silver, and the furnace for gold; but man is refined by his praise. What tests a man is not hardship here but commendation. Metal is proved by heat. A person is proved by what happens to him when he is admired, which is a harder test and a rarer one to pass.
Against that stands the fool, in the collection's most extreme statement of the case: Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with grain, yet his foolishness will not be removed from him. Grinding separates grain from husk. The image says the folly is not a coating but the substance. The book has spent thirty chapters offering instruction to people it now says cannot always be reached by it.
The chapter closes with four verses of estate management, and they are more interesting than they look. Know well the state of your flocks, and pay attention to your herds. The verb is about attentiveness rather than ownership — a man is told to know how his animals actually are, which requires walking among them.
The reason given is the point: for riches are not forever, nor does the crown endure to all generations. Money and rank both expire, and the flock has to be watched because it is the thing that renews. What follows is a small cycle of husbandry. The hay taken, the new growth appearing, the grasses gathered, the lambs clothing the household, the goats buying a field, and the milk feeding the family and the servants. Every step depends on the one before. Wealth in this book is not a store to be guarded but a process to be kept running. And the last people named in the list are the servant girls.
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