Within today’s reading we find opposite pronouncements in adjacent verses: “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself. Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes” (Proverbs 26:4-5).

If we suppose that every verse in scripture should be taken as holding absolute authority, then we are faced with a hard situation: the text forbids a certain behavior in one verse and requires it in the next. When we assume that that’s the way scripture ought to work, then we create for ourselves “a contradiction in the Bible.”

But if we read the Bible seriously enough to recognize that these lines are written as proverbs, we can see that each one expresses a deep sense of wisdom. “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself” – that is, it’s a fool’s errand to try to talk sense into a fool. Yet “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes” – that is, if you don’t help people see their folly, they’ll go on thinking everything’s just fine, and so they’ll never learn any better.

This section of the book of Proverbs appears to have been compiled by editors a couple of centuries after the time of Solomon: they labeled them as “other proverbs of Solomon that the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah copied” (25:1). Interestingly, those compilers were not afraid to put these two contrasting pieces of wisdom side by side to form a compound proverbial unit (apparently they felt confident we would see it as a proverbial contrast, rather than a contradiction). In combination, the two halves add up to this: some people are such fools, you’d be a fool yourself to try to explain to them how foolish they’re being; and yet someone needs to try, or else they’ll never realize what’s wrong with what they’re saying.

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We are all fools, lost in our folly, O Lord; we have nevertheless thought we were wise, and we have all made fools out of those who have tried to help us, time and again. Yet you have drawn near to instruct us in the way we should go: give us grace to learn from you, that we may gain true wisdom.