Proverbs 27: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Proverbs 27 is a collection of short sayings, most of them one or two lines long, about praise, friendship, rivalry, appetite, and self-knowledge. Several sayings compare things: a fool's anger to heavy stone and sand, a quarrelsome wife to a leaking roof, iron sharpening iron to one person sharpening another. The chapter closes with a longer piece of advice, verses 23 to 27, urging careful attention to flocks and herds, since wealth and rank do not last, while well-tended animals keep a household fed and clothed.

Claim by Claim

1. 27:1
   • Do not boast about tomorrow.
   • You do not know what a day will bring forth.
2. 27:2
   • Let a stranger praise you and not your own mouth.
   • Let a foreigner praise you and not your own lips.
3. 27:3
   • A stone is heavy.
   • Sand is a burden.
   • A fool's vexation is heavier than both the stone and the sand.
4. 27:4
   • Wrath is cruel.
   • Anger is an overwhelming flood.
   • No one can stand before jealousy.
5. 27:5
   • Open rebuke is better than concealed love.
6. 27:6
   • The wounds inflicted by a friend are faithful.
   • The kisses of one who hates are deceitful (the word is uncertain and may instead mean profuse or excessive).
7. 27:7
   • A full appetite loathes honeycomb.
   • To a hungry appetite every bitter thing is sweet.
8. 27:8
   • A man who wanders from his place is like a bird that wanders from its nest.
9. 27:9
   • Oil and incense make the heart glad.
   • The sweetness of one's friend comes from hearty counsel (the Hebrew clause is obscure and may instead say such sweetness is better than one's own counsel).
10. 27:10
    • Do not forsake your own friend.
    • Do not forsake your father's friend.
    • Do not go into your brother's house on the day of your calamity.
    • A neighbor who is near is better than a brother who is far off.
11. 27:11
    • The speaker tells his son to be wise.
    • The speaker tells his son to make his heart glad.
    • The speaker says this is so that he may answer the one who reproaches him.
12. 27:12
    • A prudent man sees the evil coming.
    • A prudent man hides himself.
    • The simple pass on.
    • The simple are punished.
13. 27:13
    • Take the garment of the one who has become surety for a stranger.
    • Take a pledge from him when he has become surety for a foreign woman.
14. 27:14
    • A man who blesses his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, has it counted to him as a curse.
15. 27:15
    • A continual dripping on a day of heavy rain and a contentious woman are alike.
16. 27:16
    • Whoever would restrain her restrains the wind.
    • His right hand meets with oil (the clause is obscure; the King James takes it as ointment that betrays itself).
17. 27:17
    • Iron sharpens iron.
    • A man sharpens the face of his friend.
18. 27:18
    • Whoever tends a fig tree will eat its fruit.
    • Whoever guards his master will be honored.
19. 27:19
    • As water reflects a face back to a face, so the heart of a man corresponds to the man.
20. 27:20
    • Sheol and Abaddon are never full.
    • The eyes of man are never satisfied.
21. 27:21
    • The refining pot is for silver.
    • The furnace is for gold.
    • A man is tested by the praise he receives.
22. 27:22
    • Even if you pound a fool in a mortar with a pestle among crushed grain, his folly will not depart from him.
23. 27:23
    • Be sure to know the condition of your flocks.
    • Set your heart on your herds.
24. 27:24
    • Riches do not last forever.
    • A crown does not endure to every generation.
25. 27:25
    • The grass is taken away.
    • New growth appears.
    • The herbs of the mountains are gathered.
26. 27:26
    • Lambs supply your clothing.
    • Goats supply the price of a field.
27. 27:27
    • There will be enough goats' milk for your own food.
    • There will be enough goats' milk for the food of your household.
    • There will be enough goats' milk for the sustenance of your servant girls.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

27:1

The King James says "Boast not thyself." To boast means to brag about yourself.

27:3

A fool in this book means a person who will not listen or learn. The King James word "wrath" means very strong anger.

27:4

"Outrageous" in 1611 English meant overwhelming or overflowing, like a flood bursting its banks, not "shocking" as it means today. The word rendered "envy" (Hebrew qin'ah) covers both envy of what another has and the jealousy of someone who feels their own claim threatened; Hebrew uses one word for both, and the proverb does not choose between them.

27:5

"Secret love" in the King James does not mean a romance kept hidden. It means affection that is felt but never acted on or shown, love that stays concealed and so does the person no good, as against correction that is given out in the open.

27:6

In that time men greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek, the way we shake hands. So an enemy's kiss looked friendly.

27:7

"Soul" here translates the Hebrew nephesh, which in this kind of saying means appetite or throat rather than the inner spirit. "The full soul" is a person with a full stomach; "the hungry soul" is an empty one.

27:8

A man's "place" meant his household, his family's plot of land, and the clan that went with it. Someone away from it had no relatives close by to speak for him, feed him, or defend his rights in a dispute, hence the picture of a bird outside the nest, exposed.

27:9

Scented olive oil was rubbed on skin and hair at feasts and to welcome guests; in a hot, dusty climate this was ordinary comfort and hospitality, not perfumery for its own sake. The second half of this verse is unusually compressed in Hebrew and translators differ: some read "the sweetness of a friend is better than one's own counsel."

27:10

"Thy father's friend" is not a casual acquaintance. Households formed lasting alliances of mutual aid that passed from one generation to the next, and such a bond carried real obligations. The saying's point turns on distance: a brother had the stronger claim on you by blood, but a neighbor who lives nearby can actually arrive when trouble comes.

27:11

In this culture a child's conduct was taken as public evidence about the parent who raised him. Someone who "reproacheth" the father is taunting him about his own worth; a wise son is the answer to the taunt.

27:12

"The simple" translates a Hebrew word for someone naive and untrained, open to any suggestion, not yet having learned to see what is coming. It does not mean stupid. This verse repeats Proverbs 22:3 almost word for word; such repeats are normal in collections of proverbs.

27:13

To be "surety" is to guarantee someone else's debt: if they fail to pay, you pay. The garment is the outer cloak, which poor people also slept under at night, taking it as a pledge was serious enough that the law required it be handed back by sundown (Exodus 22:26–27). The Hebrew behind "strange woman" can also be read as a plural, "foreigners"; ancient copies differ here and translators split between the two.

27:14

A blessing shouted loudly at daybreak was suspect: it was the behavior of a flatterer making sure he was heard, or of someone rousing a household that was still asleep. The saying turns on the excess, not on the words themselves.

27:15

Roofs were flat, made of packed clay laid over wooden beams, and had to be re-rolled after rain; a badly kept one dripped steadily indoors through a wet day. The Hebrew for "contentious woman" is literally "a wife of quarrels", a wife who keeps up the argument, not any woman in general.

27:16

"Bewrayeth" is an old English word meaning gives itself away or reveals itself, nothing to do with betrayal in the modern sense. Oil on the hand cannot be gripped and its scent announces itself. The Hebrew of this verse is among the most obscure in the book, and no translation of it is certain.

27:17

"Countenance" means face. The Hebrew of the second line reads literally "a man sharpens the face of his friend," and "face" here stands for the whole person as others encounter him, his manner, wits and bearing.

27:18

A fig tree takes years of tending before it bears well, and the one who does the tending is the one entitled to eat from it. That patience is the point of the comparison with long service to a master.

27:19

There were no glass mirrors; polished bronze ones were costly, so most people saw their own face in a bowl or pool of still water. The second line has no verb in the Hebrew, literally "so the heart of man to man", and can be read either as a person's heart showing what he truly is, or as one person's heart reflecting another's.

27:20

"Hell" here translates Sheol, the Hebrew word for the grave, the place where all the dead go; it does not carry the later idea of a place of punishment. "Destruction" translates Abaddon, a word meaning "ruin" used as another name for the same realm. The image is of a pit that swallows everyone and is never filled up.

27:21

A "fining pot" is a crucible: metal is melted in it so the impurities separate out and the true quality of the silver shows. The Hebrew of the last line is compressed and can be read two ways: that praise tests the man who receives it, or that a man is shown up by what he chooses to praise.

27:22

"Bray" means to pound or crush. Grain was hulled by pounding it in a stone bowl (the mortar) with a heavy club (the pestle) to knock the husk off the kernel. The joke is that the husk comes off grain but folly will not come off a fool.

27:23

"Flocks" are sheep and goats, "herds" cattle. In this economy livestock was the main durable wealth a household held, so knowing their condition animal by animal was the equivalent of watching one's accounts.

27:24

"Crown" stands for inherited standing and rule. The line is a rhetorical question in Hebrew, expecting the answer no: even a royal house does not keep its position automatically from one generation to the next.

27:25

This describes the farming year rather than a single event: the first cutting of hay, the new growth that follows it, and the gathering of what grows wild on the hillsides for fodder. Herds could be kept fed year-round only by working with that cycle.

27:26

Wool from the lambs was spun and woven for clothing; goats could be sold, and the price of a flock was reckoned enough to buy a field. Land was normally bought with livestock or produce rather than coin.

27:27

"Maidens" means the female servants of the household, not unmarried daughters. Feeding everyone under one's roof, servants included, was the head of the household's responsibility.