Wow! This chapter has a dreary beginning, with eleven of the first twelve verses devoted to comments about the fool. As you might guess, none of the comments are positive. None are even merely neutral. To be a fool is bad, bad, bad.

At the end of that batch of verses, we find this one (which, come to think of it, does have a positive ring of hope for the fool, though not for being a fool):

“Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him” (12).

Whoa!

That being the case, deliver me from pride and all the self-exalting traits that accompany it!

(And also deliver me from being a fool.)

from Proverbs 26:10

A little bit more from Proverbs 26: God Is Great