Proverbs 27:17

The countenance is the face. The Hebrew pânîym is plural in form and always used as a singular, and from the face itself come its other senses of front, surface and presence. The face is where a person’s mood, alertness and character show, so to sharpen a friend’s countenance is to make the whole person keener: wiser in judgment, firmer in character and better able to meet what life brings. Proverbs keeps tracing life back to what is within: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

The friend is a rêaʻ, an associate, companion or neighbour, someone we share life with to a greater or lesser degree. Strong’s derives the word from a verb meaning to associate with someone as a friend. Sharpening happens best between people who trust each other, because honest challenge is hard to receive from a stranger.

Sharpening involves friction. A good friend tells us the truth, holds us to account and encourages us, and each of these can rub before it helps. God made us to live in relationship, and he uses these dealings to shape and mature his people. Israel was commanded, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), and the whole community was to care for one another’s good. So the company we keep matters a great deal: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20). The Preacher says, “Two are better than one”, for if one falls, the other lifts him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10).

The New Testament asks the same of the church. Paul tells the Romans he is persuaded that they are “able also to admonish one another” (Romans 15:14). The letter to the Hebrews says, “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works”, and goes on to urge believers to keep meeting together (Hebrews 10:24–25). We are to be “teaching and admonishing one another” (Colossians 3:16) and to “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Speaking the truth in love, the body grows up into Christ its head, with every part supplying what the whole needs (Ephesians 4:15–16), and the whole building rests on Christ as its chief corner stone (Ephesians 2:20).

Christ himself is the one who sharpens his people most of all. His disciples were sharpened by his teaching, his searching questions and his example of righteousness, humility and love. Their misunderstandings, failures and self-centredness met his truth and grace, and they grew. He still does this work through his Spirit and through the believers he joins together, shaping us into the image of the Son.

“Waiteth” translates shâmar, which means to guard, keep watch over and attend to, so the servant here is busy with his master’s needs and interests. It is the same kind of active care that nâtsar describes for the fig tree. He carries out his instructions faithfully, watches over what belongs to his master and is ready for what is needed.

This chapter opens with a warning against boasting about tomorrow (Proverbs 27:1), and it closes with a call to “be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks” (Proverbs 27:23). Between the two, verse 18 shows honour coming through humble, steady work. Proverbs often sets diligence against laziness: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6), and “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute” (Proverbs 12:24). Paul states the wider rule: “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). The fig tree giving its fruit and the faithful servant receiving honour belong to one order that God has set in his world.

That order reaches its height in God himself. He says, “them that honour me I will honour” (1 Samuel 2:30), and in the parable the master says, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” (Matthew 25:21). Faithfulness in small things often leads to greater trust and blessing. The “fig tree” in our own lives may be a family, a job, a church or our own walk with God, and the faithful keeping of it is honoured.

Jesus is the true servant of God, who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He kept his Father’s commandments perfectly (John 15:10), and though he were a Son, “yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered”, becoming “the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:8–9). His Father honoured him above all: “God also hath highly exalted him” (Philippians 2:9), and made him “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). He is the pattern for everyone who serves the true Master.

People can keep up a front in brief or shallow meetings, and in close, honest relationships over time the true heart tends to come out. Even so, only God knows the heart fully. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart” (Jeremiah 17:9–10). “The ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD” (Proverbs 5:21), and “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). So we pray with David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart” (Psalm 139:23–24).

Scripture uses the mirror in other places too. James compares the man who hears the word and forgets it to one who looks at his face in a glass and walks away (James 1:23–25), and Paul says that now we see “through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). True self-knowledge comes as we meet the truth, in God’s word and in the honest words of others.

Christ is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). In him we see the Father, and before him our own hearts are shown for what they are. He knew what was in people: Jesus, “knowing their thoughts” (Matthew 9:4), answered what they had not said aloud, and he “knew their thoughts” in the synagogue (Luke 6:8). He shows us our sin and our need, and he gives what he promised through Ezekiel: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). As we behold his glory “as in a glass”, we “are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The word translated “Hell” is shᵉʼôwl, Sheol, which in the Old Testament means the grave or the realm of the dead that receives everyone who dies. The proverb uses it as a picture of something that keeps receiving and is never filled. It speaks of death and the grave, and it is a different word from Gehenna, which the New Testament uses for the place of final judgment. The psalmist speaks of Sheol in the same way: “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” (Psalm 6:5).

We were made to find our satisfaction in God, and a heart that looks for it in created things stays restless. This hunger is part of our fallen condition. The answer to it is God himself: “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee” (Psalm 63:1). Jesus says, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). To the Samaritan woman he offered water that would leave her thirsting no more, “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13–14). He tells us to “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Paul learned contentment in Christ: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11–13). The eyes that wander after everything are filled at last when they see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, for “in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Hardship tests our endurance, faith and dependence on God. Praise tests our humility, integrity and where our security rests. It can puff a person up, make him feel self-sufficient, or quietly take for himself the glory that belongs to God. Proverbs warns that “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18), and that “A man’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit” (Proverbs 29:23).

God is the refiner of hearts, and he uses every kind of experience, pleasant and painful alike, to show what is in us and to purify his people. “For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried” (Psalm 66:10). Peter says our faith is “tried with fire” and found more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:6–7). The LORD searches the heart (Jeremiah 17:9–10), for “man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Praise received with humility and gratitude is a good gift. It encourages, it recognises good work and it can spur a person on to further faithful service. The danger lies in the heart’s response, when praise becomes a person’s own glory or the source of who he is. Wisdom is careful in giving praise and in receiving it, and it gives the glory to God.

Jesus met both great praise and bitter rejection with the same pure heart. Praise brought out no dross in him, because there was none, and it only showed his glory and his devotion to the Father. When the crowd wanted to make him king after he fed the five thousand, he withdrew (John 6:15). When they shouted “Hosanna to the son of David” (Matthew 21:9), he went on in obedience to the Father. He said, “I receive not honour from men” (John 5:41), and “I seek not mine own glory” (John 8:50). He also refines us. He “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people” (Titus 2:14), so that we may live “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12). By his Spirit we can receive praise as he did, and pass it on to God.

The fool, ʼĕvîyl, is the foolish man, and his foolishness, ʼivveleth, comes from the same root and names his folly. Proverbs describes such a man by his lack of the fear of God and his unwillingness to listen to advice. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7). The fool’s trouble lies in the heart and will, in a refusal to be taught. Another Hebrew word, kesil, is also used for the fool in Proverbs, and both describe the same stubbornness. A person who learns slowly but is humble and teachable is on the path of wisdom.

Correction is a blessing to the teachable: “whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Proverbs 3:11–12), and a loving father disciplines his son (Proverbs 13:24). The wise man grows under it, while the scorner only hates the one who rebukes him: “rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee” (Proverbs 9:7–8). Jesus gives similar counsel when he warns against casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). Jeremiah asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). This proverb gives us realistic expectations. We can keep caring for people who refuse wisdom while putting our effort where it is welcomed, and entrust the rest to God in prayer.

Change comes from within, when a person humbles himself and turns to receive wisdom, and God’s grace brings that turning about. The hyperbole here is aimed at the attempt to force wisdom into someone from outside. Proverbs itself calls the simple to turn: “Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you” (Proverbs 1:23).

The deepest answer is in Christ. What no mortar could do, God does by giving a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26). Christ is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Through his death and resurrection he breaks the hold of sin and folly, and the foolishness that would stay in a fool under any amount of pounding departs when a heart is given to him.