Connivance

Connivance — knowing tolerance of an offense one has standing to restrain — appears under two figures: the proverbial wink and the priest who would not check his sons. Both treat silence as participation in the thing left unrestrained.

The wink of the eye

Proverbs reduces the gesture to a single line: "He who winks with the eye causes sorrow; But a prating fool will fall" (Proverbs 10:10). The winker and the fool are paired as opposite failures of speech — one says nothing where speaking would prevent harm, the other speaks where silence would. The wink is not neutral; it "causes sorrow" — the hidden assent that allows the wrong to proceed.

Eli and his sons

The narrative case is the judgment-oracle delivered to the boy Samuel against the house of Eli. Yahweh announces a coming reckoning — "Look, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of everyone who hears it will tingle" (1 Samuel 3:11) — and identifies the standing charge against Eli: "I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from the beginning even to the end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons cursed God, and he did not restrain them" (1 Samuel 3:12-13). The iniquity is named as Eli's, not just his sons'. He knew, and he did not restrain — that knowing-and-not-restraining is the connivance the verdict turns on.