Like a dog that returns to his vomit
is a fool who repeats his folly.
Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.
The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road!
There is a lion in the streets!”Proverbs 26-11-13
The Apostle Peter takes up the words of 11 in his second epistle (2:22), and the point that both verses make is a twofold one: on the one hand, the reversion to folly exposes what the man really is at heart. The fool gives himself away; on the other hand, to go back means that a man can hardly plead either ignorance or weakness: perversity is also involved. In 12 we have the first comforting thing said about the fool in the whole book! Here is someone worse than a fool, in the sense that a fool may perchance at last learn some sense from all the misfortunes that befall him, whereas a man wise in his own conceits, with exaggerated ideas of his own importance, places himself, by his very assumption of superiority, beyond the reach of help. In 13-16 we have the sluggard again. Here is another man who does not see himself as he really is. The keynote throughout is rationalisation. He does not see himself as a sluggard, he always has the perfect, plausible excuse. The issue in 13 for all of us is the conflict between duty and inclination. If we are, at heart, and secretly, lazy, it is astonishing how plausibly we shall be able to circumvent our plain duty, by introducing what we regard as 'realistic' considerations which militate against our doing it. We can always find an excuse for avoiding something we do not really want to do, even though it is our obvious duty. The amusing picture in 14 of the door swinging on its hinge has its serious point, which is that, although in constant movement, it never gets anywhere. The illusion of movement and activity without ever getting out of the bit often conceals a basic laziness. This man (15) is too lazy even to eat his food: as Kidner puts it, the rare effort of beginning his meal has been too much for him, and it goes cold on him. As for excuses and rationalisations (16), he is a past-master in the art. One has only to make the effort to help such a man to get a job to find this out. The plausible arguments he uses to explain to us why the job is not suitable are so astute that they almost earn him his social security payments for ingenuity and cleverness!