"Iron Sharpens Iron" Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means
If you’re like me, you probably grew up understanding “Iron Sharpens Iron” as a positive expression. You were told that you should have a friend or partner or colleague to “sharpen” you, someone who had similar goals, interests, or gumption to spur each other on. You sharpened each other like Michelle and Barack. Miles and Gwen. Frodo and Sam.
Like many idioms in the English language, the phrase comes from the book of Proverbs 27:17:
Iron sharpens iron,
and one person sharpens the wits (= “face”) of another (NRSV)
In some older translations of the Bible, like the KJV, you’ll see that the second part of the verse actually talks about someone sharpening the face of his “friend” and so from this it makes sense that what’s happening here is beneficial for the other person.
But Ronald Giese Jr. has recently argued that when we look at the language of this verse in its Hebrew Bible/Old Testament context, it doesn’t have the kind of positive connotation that is now associated with it.
The problem starts with the idea of sharpening someone’s face. How does this happen? It’s certainly not literal—people don’t sharpen people’s faces, and if they do it’s a criminal offence. If it’s a metaphor then, what then could it mean? There is no other mention of “sharp faces” in the OT, but there is mention of “sharp” features of the face, like a sharp tongue (Psalm 57:4; Psalm 52:2) or sharp eyes (Job 16:9). In these instances, such sharp features do harm to others and can “devise destruction” (Ps 52:2). Tongues are sharpened like snakes ready to give a poisonous strike (Psalm 140:3).
The idea of sharpening someone else’s face, then, is not about doing something positive for your friend, but aggravating them to the point where they become your enemy.
This is how the ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible may have understood the meaning of the word “sharpen.” They translate it with a Greek term that can mean “to urge or stimulate” but also “to provoke or irritate” (παροξύνω). In the rest of the Greek Old Testament, that verb is only ever used to mean “to provoke” (e.g. Num 14:11; Deut 1:34; 9:19; Ps 106:29; Hos 8:5). “Sharpening” someone else, then, could mean provoking or irritating them.
In the ancient world, the concept of “ironing sharpening iron” would be easily associated with the use of an iron hammer to form a heated weapon or tool. What this iron hammer does not do is “sharpen” the other tool. When we think of “sharpening” today we think of sharpening pencils or sharpening knives. But ancient iron tools could not be used to “file” or “sharpen” other iron tools. What would happen is that both iron pieces would become dull.
“Iron sharpening iron” refers to the preparation of a weapon, of something for ready for battle. Paired with the second half of Prov 27:17—the sharpening of someone’s face—this proverb concerns provoking another person so that they become antagonistic toward you. The context of the verse doesn’t suggest what is the cause of this “sharpening” but Giese Jr. suggests that it may be if two people spend too much time in conversation, it may lead to heated or foolish discussion (see the wider context of Prov 27:4-16).
This seems so straightforward, how could we have missed it? Strangely, it’s the English translation of “sharpening” that has cause us to presume that what the phrase “iron sharpens iron” means is something good. We’ve read our own understanding of “sharpening” back into Prov 27:17. But as we have seen, that’s not what it meant in the original context of the text. A further problem we have is that the expression “iron sharpens iron” still does mean something positive for the majority of English speakers out there and it’s unlikely that we will be able to change that usage. What we can change, however, is our understanding of Prov 27:17.
In our world today, social media has made “iron sharpening iron” an everyday occurrence, but not in a good way. The constant bickering on Facebook, notifications about replies to your comments, share features which invite strangers to reply to your posts in all caps have led to all of us spending too much time in heated discussion. Add a pandemic and we have the perfect forge for iron to sharp iron. Maybe if we take some time away from being “social” online, then we’ll be able to stop “sharpening” each other’s faces.
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