Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 196 · July 15
A Soft Answer
“A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.”
How many words into an argument do you know how it is going to end? Proverbs 15 thinks the answer is one, and it spends most of a chapter there, which is why the famous line should be read with the rest of its list.
A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. Soft is the word for tender, the quality of new grass or a young animal. The other half is blunter than it looks in English, being a word of pain, something that hurts on arrival.
The chapter keeps going. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit, and a breach is what happens to a wall that belongs to somebody else.
The line that stops most readers is further down, because it takes the softness out of soft. The heart of the righteous studieth to answer. Studieth means meditates, turns over, works at. The soft answer in verse one is prepared. Somebody thought about this conversation before walking into the room.
Then the chapter is honest about the cost. A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife, which loads the whole thing onto whoever is slower, fairly or not. And the warmest line in the list: a word spoken in due season, how good is it!
So which of the two words from verse one have you got ready? There is one waiting for the next time that particular person says that particular thing, and you have rehearsed it more than once. Is it the tender one, or the one that hurts on arrival?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 196 is Joy as Strength (Nehemiah 8:10).