kitchen table math, the sequel: Book of Proverbs

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Book of Proverbs

For homework this weekend, C. had to pick out 10 proverbs he likes. 

Here's the list:
25:15 With patience a judge may be cajoled: a soft tongue breaks bones.
25:16 Eat to your satisfaction what honey you may find, but not to excess or you will bring it up again.
25:24 Better the corner of a loft to live in than the house shared with a scolding woman.
26:4 Do not answer a fool in the terms of his folly for fear you grow like him yourself.
26:11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool reverts to his folly.
26:17 Like catching a stray dog by the tail, so is interfering in the quarrels of others.
27:3 Heaviness of stone, weight of sand, heavier than both: annoyance from a fool.
27:15 The steady dripping of a gutter on a rainy day and a scolding woman are alike.*
29:3 The lover of Wisdom makes his father glad, but the patron of harlots fritters his wealth away.
29:13 Poor man and usurer are found together, Yahweh gives light to the eyes of both.

I asked him what the last one means.

He says he doesn't know.


* I learned from my Fluenz lesson this afternoon that the Spanish word for wife - esposa - also means handcuffs.

7 comments:

r. r. vlorbik said...

it means
the rain it raineth on the just
and also on the unjust fella.
but mostly on the just because
the unjust stole the just's umbrella.

or something like that.

Anonymous said...

The 'scolding woman' seems to be a hit theme, hmmmmm.

Barry Garelick said...

There also seems to be a vomit motif here.

Catherine Johnson said...

The 'scolding woman' seems to be a hit theme, hmmmmm.

You noticed that, did you?

The scolding women proverbs were the two C. chose to read out loud.

I'm sure if he'd been reading proverbs to his dad, he would have picked the one about vomit.

Tracy W said...

C might like this:

9 most badass bible verses.

palisadesk said...

In sixth grade we studied the Middle Ages and one activity I remember was to make a medieval-style manuscript page with an appropriate verse (could be Biblical or a suitably archaic-sounding poetry selection).

You did the manuscript writing with calligraphy pens, illustrated with markers in the big box with the enlarged capital letter, and painted the paper with a solution made of strong tea, and got a fairly realistic-looking facsimile of a medieval document.

I chose a verse -- from the Song of Songs, I think -- which went thus:

For lo, the winter is past
The rain is over and gone
The time of the singing birds is come
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

My illustration had birds in leafy branches around the sides of the box, the sun at the top and a realistic Eastern Box Turtle (with a balloon showing musical notes and a treble clef) emerging from his smiling, open jaws.

I was into herps big-time at that age.

But, oh woe -- the teacher informed me that the "voice of the turtle" referred to turtleDOVES.

Aaargh. I had thought in the Bible days maybe turtles *did* sing.

Sigh.

But I still like that verse -- and imagine singing turtles along with the spring peeper frogs that herald spring in these parts.

Anonymous said...

The last one means that God created all of us, and find us all to have value, including both the oppressed and the oppressor, (though I guess it could just be both the borrower and the lender.)