At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof, when thy neighbour hath put thee to shame” (Proverbs 25:8).
“Do not go hastily to court; For what will you do in the end, when your neighbor has put you to shame?” (Proverbs 25:8, NKJV).
We might summarize this proverb right at the beginning by saying that we “shouldn’t start what we can’t finish.”
The key word here is “hastily.” Just as a king should not go to war without counting his troops (Luke 14:31), or a builder of towers should take a third look at the budget (Luke 14:28), so in the same way an aspiring litigant should take a long, hard look at his case.
The only people who almost always profit in such circumstances would be the lawyers. This is one reason why court cases don’t easily end, as the joke goes, because lawyers bill by the hour, and not by the outcome.
So this proverb is urging is to avoid the legal system equivalent of road rage. In the heat of the moment, when the “offense,” whatever it is, has just been committed, a man’s anger can make absolutely everything seem open and shut. When he tells his family and friends about it, they concur, and because they have not remembered Proverbs 18:17, they urge him on.
The thing that we are being encouraged to avoid is the shame and embarrassment when your neighbor pulls out the contract that you forgot that you had signed and, as it turns out, he did not forget that you had signed.
With all this said and acknowledged, we need to remember that there is a difference between “hastily” and “suddenly.” A hasty move is impulsive. A man who has been careful to think things through beforehand might, when the occasion is right, move suddenly and decisively. But that is not at all like the lurch of the imprudent man.
