Proverbs 27:22 - Exposition

Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle. "To bray" is to pound or beat small. "Wheat," רִיפוֹת , riphoth (only in 2 Samuel 17:19 ), "bruised corn." Vulgate, In pila quasi ptisanas (barley groats) feriente ; Aquila and Theodotion, ἐν μέσῳ ἐμπτισσομένων "In the midst of grains of corn being pounded." The LXX ; reading, differently, has, "Though thou scourge a fool, disgracing him ( ἐν μεσῳ συνεδρίου ) in the midst of the congregation." Of course, the process of separating the husks from the corn by the use of pestle and mortar is much more delicate and careful than threshing in the usual clumsy way; hence is expressed the idea that the most elaborate pains are wasted on the incorrigible fool (see on Proverbs 1:20 ). His foolishness will not depart from him. An obstinate, self-willed, unprincipled man cannot be reformed by any means; his folly has become a second nature, and is not to be eliminated by any teaching, discipline, or severity. There is, too, a judicial blindness, when, after repeated warnings wilfully rejected and scorned, the sinner is left to himself, given over to a reprobate mind "Whoso teacheth a fool," Siracides pronounces, "is as one that glueth a potsherd together, and as he that waketh one from a sound sleep" (Ecclesiasticus 22:7). Again, "The inner parts of a fool are like a broken vessel, and he will hold no knowledge as long as he liveth" (Ecclesiasticus 21:14). In Turkey, we are told, great criminals were beaten to pieces in huge mortars of iron, in which they usually pounded rice. "You cannot straighten a dog's tail, try as you may," says a Telugu maxim (Lane). There is a saying of Schiller's which is quite proverbial, "Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce." Horace, 'Epist.,' 1.10, 24—

" Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret ."

Juvenal, 'Sat.,' 13.239—

" Tamen ad mores natura recurrit

Damnatos, fixa et mutari nescia ."