Posts Tagged: irony vs. sarcasm

“Trifling with Truth?”

On October 28, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Prov. 19:27   Cease to hear instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.” (English Standard Version)

Translating from one language to another is not a science; it is an art.

Take, for example, Proverbs 19:27.  If you check this verse out in different translations, you will find lots of differences.  The individual Hebrew words are straightforward and clear enough.  The problem is that they jostle one another in a most undignified and confusing manner.  Concerning Prov. 19:27, Yoder notes the “puzzling” nature of the proverb.  “That it blatantly contradicts numerous exordia and proverbs urging attention—“Stop, my child, listening to discipline, to stray from words of instruction—suggests it is probably ironic (e.g., 19:20).”[1]

Of course, irony is always hard to detect.  If it is not hard to detect, it is probably sarcasm, rather than irony.

Kidner has a slightly different take on the verse.  “The AV contains two improbabilities: (a) that instruction, unqualified, should have a bad sense in Proverbs; (b) that to err should mean ‘to cause to err’ (for which Heb. has an appropriate expression). RV, RSV seem justified in taking it as an outcry against trifling (RV: Cease … to hear instruction (only) to err from … knowledge). Cf. 17:16; 2 Peter 2:21.”[2]

Perhaps we could combine Kidner with Yoder.  Perhaps this proverb is an ironic warning against trifling with the truth.  If so, the proverb may warn its hearers about a danger that the New Testament also acknowledges: the danger of hearing, but not doing anything about what we’ve heard.

Take the book of James, for example.  This book has often been compared to the Old Testament book of Proverbs.  Perhaps Proverbs 19:27 should be compared to a passage in James.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”  (James 1:22-25)

The writer of James says that we are blessed in the doing, not in the listening (English Standard Version).  What will I choose to do today—only listen, or bring my listening to life by my living?

[1] Christine Roy Yoder, Proverbs, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 207.

[2]Derek Kidner, Proverbs: An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC 17; IVP/Accordance electronic ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1964), 128.

https://accordance.bible/link/read/Tyndale_Commentary#26434

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