Coins in the Pocket
A closer look at biblical money and everyday coins brings the language and setting of Scripture into sharper focus.
Read Time: 6 minutes
Here is some advice. “As you go through life, it is effective to think beforehand about possible situations that could arise, so that you can take preventative steps, and then, if such a situation does arise, you will be prepared and able to avoid potential negative consequences.”
That is perfectly sound counsel. It is also completely unmemorable. Nobody will ever quote it. What I was trying to say was: “prevention is better than cure.” Five words; far more powerful!
That is what a proverb is for: to be appreciated, memorized, and used. It is not an essay. It is a small piece of literature, cut down until nothing can be removed, so that it can be carried about in the pocket and spent when the moment comes—a bit like a coin (this was originally scholar Michael V. Fox’s analogy), conveniently carried and then spent.
The trouble is that when we read the Book of Proverbs in English, some of the proverbs seem too obvious to have needed saying at all, and others seem so cryptic that we cannot see what they are getting at. Both problems very often dissolve once you know a little about how the Hebrew works. Not the language itself—you do not need that—but simply how short the lines are, and how their parts are arranged.
How Short is Short?
Take a familiar example which I think Robert Alter discusses in one of his books, Proverbs 13:24. Word for word, the Hebrew says:
Sparer-of his-rod—hater-of his-son;
but-his-lover—seeks/applies-him-early discipline.
The hyphens connect English words to show that they form a single word in Hebrew; the long dashes indicate where we might insert a verb or connector, but Hebrew doesn’t require one. So we have merely four words in the first line, and three in the second in the original. As a rule of thumb, what takes three or four words in English takes one in Hebrew. This means that if a proverb feels wordy or flabby in translation, it is likely not that way in Hebrew. If it feels over-obvious, perhaps, when spelled out in the many words English may require, it will be expressed much more compactly (and therefore more effectively and memorably) in the original.
Now let’s return to the proverb and examine what the two lines do. There is a straight contrast running crosswise: the man who spares the rod is, paradoxically, the one who hates rather than the one who loves. The man who loves is the one who disciplines. That can offer a challenge for any parent of young children (remembering to discipline, and then being consistent and proportionate while doing so, is hard work, but a responsibility that must be faced).
How would you translate the proverb? One respected commentator offers something along the lines of: “He who will not punish [or discipline] his son shows no love for him, for if he loves him he will be concerned to discipline him.” That is a fairly accurate account of the meaning, but it is dead on the page—my lumbering paragraph about prevention all over again. At the other extreme, “spare the rod and spoil the child,” originating in a 17th-century poem, has entered common use. It has all the snap you could want, but it is not quite what the verse says either; the proverb is not talking about spoiling but about love and hate, which is a far sharper contrast.
The AV, as it happens, does rather well here: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” That last word is worth pausing over. The Hebrew verb comes from a root meaning to seek diligently or to seek early, even at dawn—the loving father prioritizes discipline and is diligent in his responsibilities.
Of course, there is a flipside risk: the overbearing father, always critical, always angry or disappointed in his children’s poor performance. That will soon drive a child to frustration or worse, and other Scriptures speak of not provoking children to anger and seeking the “debts” of others when we are unable to pay our own. But this proverb is not about that—it is simply about the importance of discipline (not its risks when taken too far). It is a parent’s duty not to neglect it. This is also an important point about proverbs—they should not be “over-read” or inappropriately globalized. They make a certain point, and they make it memorably and powerfully. But they do not necessarily cover every aspect of a subject or say everything that might need to be said about it. We should not expect them to, and we should not impose on them a level of comprehensiveness they were not intended to bear. They say a lot in seven or eight words, but they cannot say everything!
Reading Across, Down, and Diagonally
Because most proverbs are composed of two short lines, the elements in those lines can be aligned and compared. Usually there are four elements, and the useful trick is to read them not only in parallel but crosswise, in an X.
Thus, Proverbs 12:4, word for word:
A-woman-of worth—crown-of her-husband;
but-like-rot in-his-bones—one-causing-shame.
Read straight across, husband goes with wife, worth goes with crown (the first line), rot goes with shame (the second). Read vertically, now, and worth contrasts with rot, and crown contrasts with shame. But read the X (diagonally) and something else appears: worth contrasts with shame, but crown is set against “rot in the bones.” That particular contrast merits more thought. A crown is put on you from outside. It is external to you, adorning you and completing you. Perhaps it is a man’s most prized possession, the ultimate symbol of kingship, and a worthy or virtuous wife makes him feel like one! Yet a crown is not part of him; it is an extra, a bonus, a finisher, visible to others. Rot in the bones is the opposite. It gnaws away on the inside, and it works away unseen, demoralizing and debilitating. How a wife speaks to and treats her husband is very important to his inner wellbeing.
Notice, too, the contrast in the description of the two wives. The one is described by what she is in herself—a woman of worth. The other is described by what she does to somebody else: shaming them, making them feel smaller, taking away, and belittling them. The remedy the proverb implies is not that a wife should manufacture praise for a husband who has not earned it. It is simply that she should be worthy herself.
A Paired Example
Proverbs 26:15-16 can be read as two separate proverbs, but they also form an interesting interacting pair. The first is literally:
Buries sluggard his-hand in-the-dish
he-is-too-weary to-return-it to-his-mouth
The return journey of bringing his hand back to his mouth is just too much for him; he is too weary and lethargic to even attend to his basic needs.
The proverb carries further interest when paired with its successor:
Wise(r) sluggard in-his-own-eyes
than-seven answering/returning discernment
Both proverbs are about sluggards —but there are more subtle connections. The word “answering” is a form of the verb “to return” used in the previous proverb. The fool cannot return his hand to his mouth, yet thinks himself wiser than seven who return judgment, discretion, or discernment. There is a sound play between “seven” and “answer” (mishiv’ah meshive), and the fool thinks himself better than seven-fold wisdom (perfection or completeness!). We know differently, of course, because we have seen him too senseless to even return food to his mouth, let alone return wisdom.
There is a further wordplay also. That word, discernment or judgment, can also carry the meaning “taste,” connecting up with the fool’s refusal to taste because he can’t be bothered to bring his hand to his mouth. Wisdom is a thing of great taste, derived from God, but it is all too easy to be like a fool, deluding ourselves into thinking that we know better, and ending up starving ourselves in the process.
A Reminder
As we hinted earlier, each proverb is a snapshot, an aspect of a thing seen from one angle. Look from another angle and another proverb may show a different perspective. That is why Proverbs 26 can say, in one verse, “Answer not a fool according to his folly,” (v. 4) and in the very next, “Answer a fool according to his folly.” (v. 5). Neither proverb is universally applicable; there are times to answer in kind, and times to contradict or rebuke. By deliberately juxtaposing these two seemingly contradictory verses, inspired Scripture shows us two angles and leaves us with a task: to work out which moment we are in.
Which is exactly what the book told us at the outset it was for — “To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.” (Proverbs 1:6). It takes practice. And the first step is simply to slow down, one verse at a time, and look at what is set against what, carefully unpacking the puzzle. Even with no knowledge of Hebrew, an interlinear Hebrew-English Bible (or suitable Bible software) that presents the literal structure of what the Hebrew says in English can help us recover the compact nature of the original and look for connections among the various elements from which the proverbs are built.
Mark Vincent,
Lapworth Ecclesia, UK