Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible

5. “How Long Will You Love Being Simple?” Irony in Wisdom Traditions

Many diverse types of irony enliven Israel’s wisdom literature. The rallying cry of biblical wisdom literature is, “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?” (Prov 1:22), itself ironic in its implication that it is the conscious choice of the ignorant to remain unenlightened. Local ironies are common in the collections of aphorisms we find in the Book of Proverbs. In sapiential maxims, fools are mocked by demonstrations of the incongruity between their behavior and their expectations; irony forms the subtext of such maxims. Ironies texture much of the dry wit in Proverbs more generally. Bruce K. Waltke notes two examples in his introduction to his Proverbs commentary: Solomon’s command that his tutee cease listening to instructions to stray from wisdom (19:27) and the suggestion of King Lemuel’s mother that he give strong drink to the poor rather than imbibing intoxicants himself (31:4–6).1 Waltke underlines the risk of misreading the latter injunction. The command, he says, “means exactly the opposite. English translators, fearful that an unsophisticated reader will miss the irony, purge the text of the powerful figure by making it say the intended opposite.”2 The following verses, which urge King Lemuel to defend the rights of the needy, would in5 “How Long Will You Love Being Simple?” Irony in Wisdom Traditions 188 Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible deed seem to contradict a “straight” reading of verse 6 that one should give strong drink to one who is perishing. One may read Proverbs 30:29–31 not as a commendation of kingly grandeur but as an ironic slight on royal pretentiousness: Three things are stately in their stride; four are stately in their gait: the lion, which is mightiest among wild animals, and does not turn back before any; the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and a king striding before his people. Many more examples of local ironies in Proverbs could be offered. Ironies may be discerned also in the juxtaposition of aphorisms. The juxtaposition of two apparently contradictory proverbs in Proverbs 26:4–5 ironizes any absolutist understanding of the applicability of one or the other: “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself” is immediately followed by, “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes,” yielding the implication that not only fools but the (ostensibly) wise will be foolish if they do not carefully assess the particulars of a situation, including the situation of interacting with fools.3 Another feature of Israelite wisdom tradition that may be evaluated as ironic in effect is wisdom’s emphasis on dialogical means of ascertaining truth. Dialogue between sage and disciple, parent and child, or sufferer and interlocutor structures Proverbs and Job. One might consider the Book of Qohelet implicitly dialogical in its didactic soliloquy, too— Qohelet is clearly responding to the well-established propositions of orthodox wisdom teachers—even if one does not follow T. A. Perry’s dialogical schema for identifying different voices in the text.4 Biblical wisdom dialogues may be considered ironic for two reasons. First, the invitation to dialogue embodied in direct address and didactic instruction suggests that the implied audience has a voice and a role to play. Yet we do not hear the voice of the audience in Proverbs and in Qohelet, so the dialogical effect is, in a real sense, illusory. One may proceed from that conclusion, then, to the implication that the invitation to dialogue is extended only ironically. The sages writing in Proverbs and Qohelet are in fact enacting monologues in the Bakhtinian sense of closed systems of discourse, even if, in the case of Proverbs, parallel or juxtaposed monologues may be perceived within the different collections. A second sense in which biblical wisdom dialogism may be seen as ironic has to do with a potential converse effect noticed by Carol A. Newsom. Newsom argues that the fact that Lady Folly is voiced in Proverbs (Folly’s message is characterized and even quoted in numerous texts) “How Long Will You Love Being Simple?” 189 means that the false teaching of Folly is, in fact, invited into the discourse of Proverbs and allowed to be heard. The reader may choose not to accept the discursive framework established by the text of Proverbs and may choose to align with the voice of Folly instead. Regarding...