Do not answer a fool according to his folly,Lest you also be like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,Lest he be wise in his own eyes.
Proverbs 26:4–5 · NKJVPart of Answer, and Do Not Answer, a Fool, Proverbs 26:4–5.
Quick answer
Do answer it, and answer it in a form its folly cannot survive, because silence can leave a fool confirmed in his own estimate. This verse is half of a deliberate pair and should never be read without verse 4.
Read the whole unit
Read the whole unit
Two consecutive verses give opposite commands in nearly identical words, and the contradiction is intentional. Whoever assembled this collection put them side by side, which rules out accident and rules out one of them being a later correction of the other. The book is doing something on purpose.
What it is doing is refusing to hand over a rule. Each verse names a real risk, and the risks are opposite. Answer him and you may end up conducting yourself the way he does, which is verse 4's warning about becoming like him. Decline to answer and he may walk away with his self-assessment intact, which is verse 5's warning about his own eyes. Both outcomes happen. Neither verse is wrong, and no formula tells you which one is in front of you today.
That is the whole teaching, and it is one of the clearest places in Scripture where wisdom is shown to be a skill rather than a code. A rule could be obeyed without understanding anything. This pair cannot be obeyed at all until you have looked at the actual person, the actual moment, and what your answer would actually do. The phrase "wise in his own eyes" then becomes the chapter's spine, returning at verse 12 about a man with no hope and at verse 16 about the sluggard.
What this verse contributes
the risk of silence. An unanswered fool may take the silence for agreement.
The other half
Do not meet foolishness on its own terms, because arguing in someone's idiom makes you a user of it. This verse is half of a deliberate pair and should never be read without verse 5.
Related: Proverbs 26:12 · Proverbs 26:16 · Proverbs 3:7 · Proverbs 23:9
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.