Proverbs 27:22

The Message

Pound on a fool all you like— you can’t pound out foolishness.

Cross References

1 Kings 13:33

After this happened, Jeroboam kept right on doing evil, recruiting priests for the forbidden shrines indiscriminately—anyone who wanted to could be a priest at one of the local shrines. This was the root sin of Jeroboam’s government. And it was this that ruined him. * * *

Exodus 12:30

Pharaoh got up that night, he and all his servants and everyone else in Egypt—what wild wailing and lament in Egypt! There wasn’t a house in which someone wasn’t dead.

Exodus 14:5

When the king of Egypt was told that the people were gone, he and his servants changed their minds. They said, “What have we done, letting Israel, our slave labor, go free?” So he had his chariots harnessed up and got his army together. He took six hundred of his best chariots, with the rest of the Egyptian chariots and their drivers coming along.

Exodus 15:9

The enemy spoke, “I’ll pursue, I’ll hunt them down, I’ll divide up the plunder, I’ll glut myself on them; I’ll pull out my sword, my fist will send them reeling.”

Proverbs 14:24

The wise accumulate wisdom; fools get stupider by the day.

Proverbs 26:11

As a dog eats its own vomit, so fools recycle silliness.

Isaiah 1:5

“Why bother even trying to do anything with you when you just keep to your bullheaded ways? You keep beating your heads against brick walls. Everything within you protests against you. From the bottom of your feet to the top of your head, nothing’s working right. Wounds and bruises and running sores— untended, unwashed, unbandaged. Your country is laid waste, your cities burned down. Your land is destroyed by outsiders while you watch, reduced to rubble by barbarians. Daughter Zion is deserted— like a tumbledown shack on a dead-end street, Like a tarpaper shanty on the wrong side of the tracks, like a sinking ship abandoned by the rats. If God-of-the-Angel-Armies hadn’t left us a few survivors, we’d be as desolate as Sodom, doomed just like Gomorrah.

Jeremiah 13:23

Can an African change skin? Can a leopard get rid of its spots? So what are the odds on you doing good, you who are so long-practiced in evil?

Jeremiah 5:3

But you, God, you have an eye for truth, don’t you? You hit them hard, but it didn’t faze them. You disciplined them, but they refused correction. Hardheaded, harder than rock, they wouldn’t change. Then I said to myself, “Well, these are just poor people. They don’t know any better. They were never taught anything about God. They never went to prayer meetings. I’ll find some people from the best families. I’ll talk to them. They’ll know what’s going on, the way God works. They’ll know the score.” But they were no better! Rebels all! Off doing their own thing. The invaders are ready to pounce and kill, like a mountain lion, a wilderness wolf, Panthers on the prowl. The streets aren’t safe anymore. And why? Because the people’s sins are piled sky-high; their betrayals are past counting.

1 Samuel 19:21

That was reported back to Saul, and he dispatched more men. They, too, were soon prophesying. So Saul tried a third time—a third set of men—and they ended up mindlessly raving as well!