A Proverb Is Not a Promise

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Parents of grown children who did depart have read that line as a promise God broke, or as a verdict on themselves. It is neither, and the book itself says so.

Lesson 6 of 12 · Reading a proverb

A proverb states how the world usually goes, compressed until it can be carried in the memory. It describes a pattern, not a guarantee. Read as a guarantee it makes the book say things its own writers deny a few chapters on, and the test is simple: if a proverb taken as a promise makes another proverb false, it was never a promise.

The book says what it is

The preface to Proverbs ends by telling you what you are holding. It is not a list of rules, and it does not call itself one. It calls itself a collection of sayings, comparisons and riddles, and it says the purpose of the collection is that you learn to understand them.

to understand a proverb and parables, the words and riddles of the wise. — Proverbs 1:6 · WEB

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The word translated proverb is worth a minute, because English narrows it.

מָשָׁל mâshâl H4912

apparently from מָשַׁל in some original sense of superiority in mental action; properly, a pithy maxim, usually of metaphorical nature; hence, a simile (as an adage, poem, discourse); byword, like, parable, proverb.

The same word is Balaam’s oracle over Israel (Numbers 23:7), the taunt sung over the fallen king of Babylon (Isaiah 14:4), and a riddle Ezekiel is told to put to the house of Israel (Ezekiel 17:2). A word wide enough to hold an oracle, a taunt and a riddle is not a word for a contract. At its root it means a comparison: this is like that. A proverb sets one thing beside another and leaves you to see the likeness.

Two proverbs that contradict each other, on purpose

Whoever gave the book its final shape put these two lines next to each other, and did it knowing what they say.

“Don’t answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.” Proverbs 26:4 · WEB
Answer him, and you have joined him at his level.
“Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Proverbs 26:5 · WEB
Do not answer him, and he walks away confirmed.

Both are true. Neither is true always. Which one is right this afternoon depends on the fool in front of you, and the book does not say which; it expects you to look. That is the whole method in two verses. A promise cannot have an occasion. A pattern must.

The verse everyone reads as a promise

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. — Proverbs 22:6 · WEB

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Read as a pattern it is plainly true, and every parent knows it: the way a child is started tends to hold. Read as a promise it convicts every parent of a child who left, and it sets the book against its own opening chapters, where a father pleads with a son not to go with the men who lie in wait for blood (Proverbs 1:10–15). The pleading is there because the son can go. The book’s own portrait of a grown child who would not listen puts the choice in the son’s hands, not the father’s.

One point here is honestly contested, and it is better said than hidden. The phrase rendered “in the way he should go” is, word for word, “according to his way,” and the should is supplied. Some read it as the way suited to that particular child, so that the verse is about fitting the training to the child rather than the child to the training. A few read it as dry irony: let a child have his own way, and he will never leave it. The traditional reading remains the most likely, and nothing in this lesson turns on the choice. What matters is that a line whose translation is this open is not the place to build a guarantee.

When the pattern fails, the Bible says so

Proverbs describes the grain of the world. The same Bible that holds Proverbs 10:4 also holds Job, and Job’s whole argument is that the grain sometimes runs the other way.

“He becomes poor who works with a lazy hand, but the hand of the diligent brings wealth.” Proverbs 10:4 · WEB
The pattern: work is usually rewarded.
““Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power?” Job 21:7 · WEB
Job’s question, which the book never answers with a proverb.
“I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11 · WEB
The Preacher watching the pattern fail, and refusing to pretend otherwise.
“For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Psalm 73:3 · WEB
A psalmist who nearly lost his footing over exactly this.

That is not a contradiction waiting to be solved. It is three kinds of writing doing three jobs. Proverbs tells you how things usually go, so that you can act. Job and Ecclesiastes tell you what to do with the days when they do not. A reader who takes Proverbs as a set of promises has to explain Job away; a reader who takes it as a set of patterns has no need to.

What a proverb asks of you

It asks for judgment. A law asks to be obeyed and a promise asks to be trusted, but a proverb asks to be applied, and the book is blunt about what happens when it is applied badly.

Like the legs of the lame that hang loose, so is a parable in the mouth of fools. — Proverbs 26:7 · WEB

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A true proverb in the wrong mouth, at the wrong moment, hangs useless. Wisdom, in this book, is not knowing the sayings. It is knowing which one this day needs. That is why the collection opens by asking for understanding rather than obedience, and why its first request is that you learn to read it.