Proverbs 10:23 Commentary and Bible Study

The Hebrew word translated ‘sport’ means ‘laughter’. It comes from a root word meaning ‘to laugh’, ‘to play’, or ‘to mock’, and seems to be used of either derisive laughter, or smug satisfied laughter. Someone has secured something by some devious method, and having got what they wanted they laugh a kind of gleeful cackle of satisfaction. Or maybe they have got away with some act which brings somebody into ridicule, someone who they may not like. They laugh with great satisfaction. It is a kind of tainted laughter, so it is a very good translation. It is like the laughter of the more vicious kind of hunter, who gets his quarry, and what satisfaction it gives him to see the animal caught: his cunning has prevailed against the instincts of the animal. The sort of mischief in mind here is a scheme, a plan, but by extension, it means a mischievous, a wicked idea. You see at once from the illustration that this is not a man or a woman who works according to principles: what is right for me, what the Lord requires. No, it is what I want; that gives me satisfaction. How I enjoy getting what I want, getting my schemes to work out. It is like a great sport, it is the quest of my life to get my pleasures. Such a person is actually described as a fool in the strongest sense of the word. It is the silly fool, the exhibitionist fool, the person who makes an utter exhibition of himself, and everybody says poor fellow, he cannot help it. Really, as Christians, do we want to slip back under the standards of the old life? No the standard of the Christian is quite different – ‘But a man of understanding’ – the opposite of a fool: a spiritually intelligent man – ‘hath wisdom.’ The person of spiritual intelligence gets all his satisfaction, not from earthly dreams and lusts, but from wisdom, which means skill.