Proverbs 18:17-24: in context

Proverbs collects short sayings from Israel's wisdom teachers, most of them a single line with two halves. They are not promises but observations, the sort of thing learned by watching people for a long time. This passage is a run of them on speech, conflict, and friendship.

The first is worth the whole page: the one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. It is a rule about listening, written by someone who has watched a lot of disputes, and it holds in a courtroom, an argument between friends, or anything read once and believed. Then a saying about the lot, casting something like dice, used to settle quarrels between strong parties precisely because no one could accuse it of favoritism. Then the hard one: an offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city, and quarrels are like the bars of a castle. Family conflicts are built like siege works.

The section turns to the tongue, saying death and life are in its power, and then closes on friendship. A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. The whole run assumes that words build the walls and words can breach them. Whose case have I accepted because I heard it first, and have I gone looking for the cross-examination?