Like a dog returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. Proverbs 26:11
If you find it disgusting, then you’re pickin’ up what he’s layin’ down. It really is meant to be gross.
In the study of rhetoric, this verse is a prime example of a flawless, deductive argument. The principles undergirding the premises need not be explained, for two very obvious things are assumed by the sage as he constructs his argument to instruct his progeny: first, everybody knows what a dog does upon returning to his regurgitation, and secondly, everybody knows what it tastes like.
Beginning with second assumed premise–we all know what it tastes like. Vomit is not vomit unless it exits via the hole that it previously entered as food. The open-ended digestive system is only at peace when it is a one-way-street. In all the recent conversation about natural law, here’s a good example: the food is supposed to go in one hole and come out the other one. Anything entering or exiting the wrong, respective, human orifice is unnatural, i.e. not designed to work that way. A happy digestive system is like a British boy-band: Mono-directional.
Now, back to the first premise: what do dogs do upon returning to their up-chuck? Are dogs acting against nature when they feast upon their own puke? Apparently not—I’ve never met a dog that has resisted this smorgasbord of spew, but the fact that they eat it doesn’t make it food. It doesn’t make it any less vomit in their mouth than it was on the ground. Eating vomit does not make it food. It stays vomit, hence, the inherent, visceral urge to vomit upon reading this proverb.
Why does this proverbial argument about fools communicate so effectively? It resonates, deep-down, because it doesn’t need to be explained. Once you know what barf is, which every reader of this proverb knows all too well, then you are repulsed by the prospect of eating it, which would be entirely unnatural for a human, or even by the thought of a dog eating it, which naturally occurs every time they encounter it.
Are you a fool? Am I a fool? Today, are we going to repeat our folly? If we do, we are like a beagle at a banquet of barf; a poodle at a parfait of puke; or a schnauzer at a smorgasbord of spew.<>
