Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Luke 4:31-32

v.8

The sense is that of a man who has the ability to wade through the unusual events in life.

That is one of the stated goals of Proverbs:

ICC Proverbs

A man is commended according to his intelligence, A wrongheaded man is despised.

Antithetic, ternary (or, binary-ternary).

Intelligence is capacity of sound thought and judgment; so in 3:4 (on which see note) 13:15; 16:22; 19:11; 23:9; Job 17:4; 1 Sam.

25:3, and cf. the corresponding adj.

(Partcp.) in 10:5, 19; 14:35, etc.

The opposite quality is distortion, wrongness of intellect (lit. of heart), incapacity to think soundly.

The contrast intended is not of learning and ignorance, or of philosophical depth and shallowness, but of ability and inability to think justly in common matters of life.

The proverb is a tribute to intellectual clearness, without special reference to, but doubtless with inclusion of, the moral and religious sides of life.

The English term perverse (RV.) has an element of wilfulness which is not contained in the Hebrew; the sense of the latter is better expressed by our wrongheaded, taken as = “incapable of just, discriminating thought, lacking in judgment,” Lat.

excors.

Type: Individual Proverb (12:8) 12:8 Respect is gained by wisdom.

The term here implies integrity and capacity to deal with problems in life.

Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, vol.

14, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993), 130.

“A man of perverse mind...” = dense, wrongheaded.

The English term perverse (RV.) has an element of wilfulness which is not contained in the Hebrew; the sense of the latter is better expressed by our wrongheaded, taken as = “incapable of just, discriminating thought, lacking in judgment,” Lat.

excors.

Crawford Howell Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, International Critical Commentary (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 245.