Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
I think we have to understand the verses before we are able to decide how to apply them. I have noted this tendency in many cases in the past. We find something we don't think we understand, make a singular suggestion, then run with it.
So let's start with the verses rather than with TC or BP or anyone else, defining them as the fool.
I will throw out a consideration. I have no clear thought that it is correct, but here goes.
Might it be that how you read "according to his folly" in the two verses is the difference? In the first instance "according to his folly" is to step down into it and join the fool and his folly while trying to answer? In the second, it is to understand and respond to the error in thinking that has led to such folly? In other words, "according to his folly" is a somewhat vague statement that could mean both something like "fall into his folly" or into his way of thinking, his error, or it could mean to analyze and respond to the error in his way of thinking that is leading to folly. One is to join the folly. The other is to dissect the folly. Yet it is the folly that is engaged in either instance — one from the inside as a participant, and the other from the outside as one with an understanding of the error.
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I think this approach has merit. However, you have to realize that the writer intentionally put these two proverbs directly next to each other. It is a logical construct very similar to mathematical formula. To then come in and say that the expression "according to his folly" in one part of the construct has a different meaning from its use in the second part of the construct is a violation of basic principles. It would be viewed as being deceptive.
Instead, if we say that the world is not black and white. Situations change, circumstances change, etc. In such a world you have to do a cost benefit analysis. In one verse the writer is giving you the cost, in the other he is giving you the benefit. If the benefit outweighs the cost, then rebuke a fool. If not, don't.