Bible Synapse
Can foolishness be driven out, or will it never depart from a fool?
Hard question · Psalms, wisdom and the prophets · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
Though a fool be pounded in a mortar with a pestle among grain, his foolishness will not depart from him.
Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings his mother shame.
The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.
The objection
Proverbs 22:15 says that “the rod of correction shall drive” foolishness far from a child. Proverbs 27:22 says that even if you pound a fool in a mortar, “yet will not his foolishness depart from him.” Can folly be corrected or not?
The answer
The two proverbs speak of different people at different stages. Proverbs 22:15 is about a child (na‘ar, a boy or youth): folly is “bound in the heart of a child”, and loving correction while he is young can drive it out. Proverbs 27:22 is about the ’ewil, the settled fool, a man who has grown up despising wisdom and correction. By then folly has become his second nature, and no punishment, however hard, will force it out of him; like a dog he goes back to it (26:11).
Read together, the sayings make one point: correct folly early, because it hardens with time. That is why Proverbs tells parents, “Withhold not correction from the child” (23:13), and warns that “a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (29:15). Neither verse says that God cannot change a hardened heart; both speak of what human discipline can do.
From the classic commentators
folly has become to the fool as a second nature, and he is not to be delivered from it by the sternest discipline, the severest means that may be triedKeil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, on Proverbs 27:22
the rod used by parents, for the correction of sin and folly, is a means of making children wise, and of restraining the folly that is bound up in themJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Proverbs 22:15