Postings on Proverbs 12:10

“A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal,

but even the compassion of the wicked is cruel” (NASB)

Before asking “What does this text mean?,” we must first ask “What does this text say?”  So, some of these questions may be obvious to you, but I ask them anyway because sometimes obvious questions lead to not-so-obvious answers.

Observations:

1.     What kind of parallelism is this? “But” suggests antithetic, but the two sides of the parallelism don’t seem to connect to each other, at least at first, but remember Proverbs 2:4 suggests wisdom does not give up her treasures easily.

2.     Who? A righteous man is contrasted with the category, wicked people.

3.     What? Regarding “the life of his animal” is contrasted with actions that look compassionate, but are actually cruel.

4.     Where & When? Anywhere and at anytime

5.     Why? The first does what he does because he is righteous, the second because he is wicked.

6.     How? Probably a myriad of different ways for both actions and intentions

7.     Does this refer to the animal’s life in general, caring that it has life, or caring what kind of life it has, or caring about the difficulty of the animal’s life, or caring about what the animal wants?

8.     How can compassion be cruel?  I could understand it better if it said their compassion is sinful, or selfish, but not cruel.

9.   Why does the author put "even" in the second part?

Word Studies

1.     Regard = “listens to, pays attention to, and internally empathizes with the need” (Waltke 1:526)

2.     Life = “the passionate drives and appetites” (Waltke 1:90, 526)

3.     Compassion = “the tender yearnings, affections, and love by a superior for a helpless inferior” (Waltke 1:527)

4.     Cruel = “insensitive, merciless, willfully, knowingly and unrelentingly inflicts pain on others” (Waltke 1:312)

I really don’t get how this verse is a parallelism or what the wisdom is, so I'm going to talk it out because that seems to help me.  I guess compassion is what links both sides of the parallelism. 

The righteous are just compassionate, even to the desires of their animals.  The wicked are not sensitive to people at all, let alone animals, but inflict pain even when being compassionate.  I need more help, so let's go to the commentaries.

Both Waltke (1:526-7) and Longman (273) say this proverbs is an argument from the lesser to the greater, namely, if the righteous man cares for his animal how much more will he care for his fellow man?  Waltke also says the second stanza is sarcastic because the wicked are by nature God-ignoring and others-disregarding (527) so "even" their compassion causes harm.

Now I see some of the wisdom here (I say “some of” because I don’t presume to think I see all the wisdom in this verse).  First, people often project a better person than they actually are, so you can learn a lot about what a person is on the inside by how they treat their animals.  Second, there can be a correlation, though not 100%, between how people treat their animals and how they treat people—if they abuse one they’ll likely abuse the other (sometimes, like in many animal rights circles, they treat animals better than they treat humans, especially, unborn humans).  Third, some acts that might fall under the category of compassion can actually harm people, even those that are trying to be helped.  Finally, some people are so insensitive to other people that they are actually cruel when trying to be kind.

I see this wisdom so clearly in my wife, who just loves our dog Riley.
She thinks about her needs, cares about how she’s doing and what life is like for her.  She does many kind things for her, and I often mock it in my head if not out loud.  However, after studying this proverb I’ve been feeling conviction for how I’ve encouraged her not to be very concerned about Riley because “she’s just a dog.”

We can also see this wisdom clearly in Jesus (Col 2:2-3), who taught us that if God takes care of birds how much more will He take care of us (Matt 6:26), and who never did anything cruel, but was so sensitive to the needs of others, both physical and especially spiritual, that His compassion drove Him to teach (Mark 6:34), to do miracles (Mark 8:2), to heal (Matt 14:14; Mark 1:41, 9:22), to weep (Matt 23:37-39) and, obviously, to endure the Cross.

I hope that helps! TII!!!