Proverbs 18:24

“A person who has friends may be harmed by them, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

— ‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭18‬:‭24‬‬

I had never heard of the translation differences in this text, keeping in mind these distinctions always go back to the Hebrew. The NET makes this most obvious in “may be harmed by them.” What I’ve heard my whole life is “must show himself friendly,” which apparently is not remotely possible. 

The original phrase is an infinitive, which if we rigidly brought the words over into English would be something like “to harm him/to suffer harm.”

We have to fill in some slight gaps as to who is doing the harming, but we can make safe assumptions it would be the friends based on the rest of the clause. It’s not what we would expect from a verse on friendship, but this is Proverbs. It’s wisdom. And it’s not always fun and games. 

Friends can cause harm. Friends can hurt. Friends run away or isolate. Or perhaps we should put the word friends in quotes.

Proverbs are really mini-poems, and so parallelism is key to understanding. Many times, it’s contrastive parallelism, so the second line still helps us understand the first, even if it provides the opposite situation.

“But” there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. We don’t need to jump straight to Jesus. I don’t think that’s the author’s point. So-called friends may abandon us, but there is a type of friend that actually sticks around. That’s loyal. That knows what love is. 

This is no surprise since friendship is a key theme of Proverbs (such as money, work ethic, wisdom/foolishness, words, etc). Let’s focus on first, being this kind of loyal, faithful friends. Then we can search for those types of friends. Those who so easily abandon and harm—it doesn’t say how to respond to them. But a close friendship I wouldn’t say is required. It’s okay to let them go. It’s possible to love and serve without giving your soul to them.