Nineteen Yorùbá proverbs in which Olódùmarè and Ọlọ́run appear, showing how ordinary speech talks about the supreme being's power, patience and inaccessibility to human interference.
Yorùbá proverbs about Olódùmarè and Ọlọ́run are not theology in the sense of doctrine argued out; they are ordinary speech, deployed in ordinary disputes, that happens to invoke the supreme being to settle a point. This file collects nineteen such proverbs, all drawn from Owomoyela's collection. Read together they describe a being who cannot be cheated, bribed, out-argued, or worn down, and whose decisions about human fortune are final in a way no other authority's decisions are. The proverbs never argue for God's existence. They assume it and use it as the strongest available warrant for a claim.
Olódùmarè and Ọlọ́run are treated in these proverbs as effectively interchangeable names for the same being, consistent with the account given in olodumare-and-olorun . Olódùmarè is the more formal or liturgical name; Ọlọ́run, literally "owner of the sky," is the name in more common use, and both appear in the texts below without any proverb marking a distinction between them.
Literal: A kì í one does-not ba Ọlọ́run ṣòwò trade with-God ká pàdánù and come-up a-loser.
Idiomatic: "One does not trade with God and come up a loser."
Meaning: Any venture conducted with God factored into it will succeed.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Any venture that takes God into account will surely prosper" Said to encourage a person to proceed with confidence, or to explain a success as owed to having kept God in view.
Notes: The commercial metaphor, ṣòwò, to trade, is deliberate: it puts God into a transactional frame that Yorùbá proverb language uses freely elsewhere, and the proverb's force depends on trade being a domain where losing is a live possibility for everyone else.
Source: Owomoyela 2990.
Literal: Bí alàgbà-á bá júbà if the-elder pays-homage fÓlúwa to-the-Lord, ọ̀nà á là the-path will-open.
Idiomatic: "If the elder pays homage to God, the path opens."
Meaning: Deference to God is what clears obstacles.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Nothing is possible without God, and nothing is impossible with God"
Notes: Olúwa, Lord, appears here as a further name in circulation alongside Ọlọ́run and Olódùmarè; the proverbs do not distinguish among the three, and this file does not impose a distinction the sources do not make.
Source: Owomoyela 2996.
Literal: Àtisùn dá the-going-to-sleep-and-not-waking (dying) ò ṣẹ́hìn is-not-hidden-from Olódùmarè.
Idiomatic: "A human being's dying is not hidden from the Creator."
Meaning: Death occurs under God's knowledge and by God's timing, not by accident or by any other agency's authority.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Only God determines the time of a person's death"
Notes: Dá, to sleep and not wake, is a euphemism for death, part of the broad Yorùbá practice of not naming death directly, discussed further in the mortality file of this section (75).
Source: Owomoyela 2994.
Literal: Eégún a-masquerader ṣé-é jó can-be set-alight; òòṣà-á an-òrìṣà ṣé-é jó can-be set-alight; ti Olódùmarè-é that-of-Olódùmarè yàtọ̀ is-different.
Idiomatic: "A masquerader can be set alight; a god [or idol] can be set alight; God, though, is a different matter."
Meaning: The physical vehicles of religious practice, a masquerade costume, a carved image, can be destroyed; God cannot.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Only God is beyond peril at the hands of humans"
Notes: This proverb draws a sharp line between the material form an òrìṣà takes (an image that can burn) and God, who has no such form to attack. It is a native statement of a distinction between the supreme being and the pantheon that scholars of Yorùbá religion have also made on other grounds; see olodumare-and-olorun and the pantheon overview in 06-orisa/01-what-an-orisa-is.md.
Source: Owomoyela 2997.
Literal: Màlúù tí ò nírù a-cow that has-no tail, Ọlọ́run ní ḿbá a léṣinṣin God is-who helps-it against-flies.
Idiomatic: "A cow that has no tail can count on God to help it chase flies away."
Meaning: God supplies what the helpless creature lacks the means to supply for itself.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is always some help for even the most helpless person"
Notes: The image works by ordinary observation, a tailless cow, and needs no supernatural vocabulary to be understood, which is characteristic of how these proverbs argue: from an everyday picture to a claim about God's attentiveness.
Source: Owomoyela 3003.
Literal: Múni-múni the-professional-arrester ò lè mú cannot arrest Olódùmarè.
Idiomatic: "The professional arrester cannot arrest the Almighty."
Meaning: No human authority, however empowered to seize and punish, has jurisdiction over God.
Used when: Owomoyela: "God is beyond human punishment"
Notes: Múni-múni, reduplicated from mú, to seize or arrest, names an agent-role rather than a person, the professional catcher of wrongdoers, and setting that role against Olódùmarè states the limit of all earthly authority in a single image.
Source: Owomoyela 3004.
Literal: "Ǹgò níí sin Olúwa, I will-not worship the-Lord, ǹgò níí sin Ànábì" I will-not worship the-Prophet; ohun tí olúwarẹ̀ ó sìn the-thing that such-a-person will worship ò níí tó èkùrọ̀ will-not amount-to a-palm-kernel.
Idiomatic: "'I will not worship God, and I will not worship Allah'; what such a person will worship will not be so large as a palm kernel."
Meaning: A person who rejects the major available objects of worship on principle ends up worshipping something trivial instead, since some object of ultimate concern is unavoidable.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A person who is too picky will wind up having no pick at all"
Notes: Ànábì, the Prophet, is a direct reference to Islam, and the proverb names Christianity and Islam's God-language (Olúwa) and the Muslim figure (Ànábì) side by side as the two major available options in the world the proverb comes from, which places its currency after the establishment of Islam in Yorùbá country. It is not a proverb about indigenous religion specifically, but it uses the same reasoning by which the other proverbs in this file treat God's claims as inescapable.
Source: Owomoyela 3005.
Literal: Nítorí Ọlọ́run because-of God nìmàle è ń jẹ mọ́sà is-why the-Muslim eats fried-corn-cake.
Idiomatic: "It is in deference to God that the Muslim eats fried corn cake."
Meaning: Necessity, framed as obedience to God, obliges a person to accept what they would not otherwise choose.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Necessity obliges one to do things one would not do otherwise"
Notes: The proverb assumes the hearer knows a specific practical detail, that fried corn cake (mọ́sà) was a food the Muslim community ate during fasting when better options were unavailable, and generalises from that detail to any situation of enforced acceptance. Like entry 7, it names Islam explicitly, which is evidence for the layered religious history of the communities these proverbs circulate in rather than for a purely indigenous origin.
Source: Owomoyela 3006.
Literal: Ọlọ́run God la kì í sú is-who one does-not tire-of.
Idiomatic: "Only God never gets fed up with us."
Meaning: Human patience runs out; God's does not.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Unlike people, God is infinitely patient"
Notes: Three words carry the whole claim. The construction la kì í X isolates God as the sole exception to a negated universal ("one does not X"), a compact form this file's other entries use repeatedly (compare entries 6 and 10) to state God's uniqueness by exhausting every other candidate first.
Source: Owomoyela 3014.
Literal: Ọlọ́run ní ń ṣèdájọ́ God is-who renders-judgment a-fehín-pínran one-who-uses-teeth-to-share-out-meat.
Idiomatic: "Only God can render justice to the person who uses his teeth to share out meat."
Meaning: Only God can judge acts of favouritism or theft committed in private, where no human witness could adjudicate.
Used when: Owomoyela: "God alone sees, and can reward, what people do in secret"
Notes: The image, dividing meat by biting off portions rather than cutting them fairly, describes an act of self-dealing done at the moment of distribution, where the wrongdoer is also the judge. The proverb places God specifically in the role of the witness no human distribution process can produce.
Source: Owomoyela 3015.
Literal: Ta who ni tàkúté Olúwa is-it-that the-trap of-the-Lord ò leè mú cannot catch?
Idiomatic: "Who is beyond being caught in God's trap?"
Meaning: No one escapes God's reckoning.
Used when: Owomoyela: "No one is beyond God's judgment"
Notes: Tàkúté, a trap, is a hunting term, and applying it to God recasts divine judgment as something that works the way a snare works: patiently, and without needing the quarry's cooperation or awareness.
Source: Owomoyela 3016.
Literal: Tinú tẹ̀hìn with-belly with-back ni labalábá is-how the-butterfly ń fi yin Ọlọ́run praises God.
Idiomatic: "It is with both its belly and its back that the butterfly praises the Lord."
Meaning: Praise of God should be total, offered with everything one has, not partially.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should glorify God with all one has"
Notes: A butterfly's wings show both a topside and an underside as it opens and closes them in flight, and the proverb reads this natural motion as a display of the whole self offered in worship, belly and back both turned toward praise in turn.
Source: Owomoyela 3017.
Literal: Kàkà kí ebí pa ọmọ awo kú rather-than hunger kill the-child of-an-initiate, ìpèsè ni yó yòó o the-sacrificial-provision is-what-will feed-him-to-satisfaction.
Idiomatic: "Rather than the child of the priest dying of hunger, he or she will feed to satisfaction on goods provided for sacrifice."
Meaning: Providence ensures those attached to sacred service do not go hungry, even if it means drawing on what was set aside for the gods.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Providence will not permit the referent to suffer want"
Notes: Ọmọ awo, the child of an initiate or of a cult member, situates the proverb inside religious households specifically, and the resolution, that sacrificial food becomes the child's food rather than going hungry, treats the boundary between offering and provision as permeable in the direction of human survival.
Source: Owomoyela 3000.
Literal: Kì í ṣe ẹ̀ṣẹ̀ eléhín gan-gan-ran it-is-not the-fault of-the-one-with-protruding-teeth; òrìṣà ló dá a it-is-the-god that created him tí kò fi awọ̀ bò ó who did-not with skin cover-him.
Idiomatic: "The blame does not belong to the person with protruding teeth; it was the god who created him or her that failed to cover them with enough skin."
Meaning: A person is not culpable for a defect built into them at creation.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should not be faulted for things over which one has no control"
Notes: This proverb attributes the act of individual creation and physical formation to òrìṣà rather than naming Olódùmarè directly, which is consistent with the division of labour recorded elsewhere in the corpus, where Olódùmarè is the ultimate creator and particular òrìṣà (notably Ọbàtálá, in fuller cosmological accounts) are credited with shaping the individual body. See 06-orisa/04-obatala.md for the fuller doctrinal picture; this proverb only shows that ordinary speech carries the same division without spelling it out.
Source: Owomoyela 3555.
Literal: Rìkíṣí intrigue/conspiracy ò gbọ́ oògùn does-not heed medicine; Ọlọ́run ní ḿbáni ṣẹ́gun rìkíṣí God is-who helps-one conquer intrigue.
Idiomatic: "Intrigue cannot be combatted with medicine; only God can help one conquer intrigue."
Meaning: Some threats, specifically those arising from human scheming, are beyond the reach of medicinal or magical countermeasures and require God's intervention instead.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Only God can help one overcome one's enemies"
Notes: The proverb draws a boundary around what oògùn, medicine or charm-based remedy, can do, and places conspiracy outside that boundary and inside God's alone. It is evidence that Yorùbá proverb-speech does not treat medicine and divine help as interchangeable resources; each has its proper domain.
Source: Owomoyela 3594.
Literal: Kọ̀ṣẹ̀-kọ̀ṣẹ̀ kan not-a-single recalcitrant-person kì í kọ̀ iṣẹ́ Ọlọ́run refuses God's errand.
Idiomatic: "No recalcitrant person ever refuses God's errand."
Meaning: Even the most stubborn person complies when the demand comes from God.
Used when: Owomoyela: "No one can refuse to do God's bidding"
Notes: The proverb's force depends on kọ̀ṣẹ̀-kọ̀ṣẹ̀ naming a specific character type, a person known for refusing ordinary requests, so that the claim is strongest read against that type rather than as a claim about compliant people generally.
Source: Owomoyela 3558.
Literal: Bí Ọlọ́run ń ṣe rere if God is-doing good, à ní Ó ń ṣe ibi someone-says he is-doing evil.
Idiomatic: "When God is doing good, someone says he is doing evil."
Meaning: Human beings misjudge God's actions because they cannot see the design behind them.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Those who do not understand God's grand design fault some of his actions"
Notes: This is one of the few proverbs in the collection that states directly that God's actions can be misread as evil by human observers, which makes it a rare piece of internal Yorùbá reflection on theodicy, the problem of apparent divine wrongdoing, expressed in ordinary proverb form rather than in formal doctrine.
Source: Owomoyela 3516.
Literal: Bí Ọlọ́run ò pani if God does-not kill-one, ẹnìkan ò lè pani no-one can kill-one.
Idiomatic: "If God does not kill one, nobody can kill one."
Meaning: Death requires God's authorisation; no human agent can cause it independently.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Only God can order people's fates" A variant Owomoyela records is Bí Ọlọ́run ò pani ọba ò lè pani, "If God does not kill one, the king cannot kill one" , substituting the king, the highest human power a Yorùbá speaker would ordinarily fear, for the general "no one."
Notes: The king variant is worth preserving because it names the specific human authority the proverb is measured against: not an abstract "anyone," but the one person in the traditional polity who legitimately holds power of life and death, and even that power is made subordinate to God's.
Source: Owomoyela 3517.
Literal: Ta ló gbọ́ ikú ẹbọra? who has-heard the-death of-a-spirit? Ẹnìkan kì í gbọ́ ikú Olódùmarè no-one hears the-death of-Olódùmarè.
Idiomatic: "Whoever heard of the death of a spirit? No one ever hears of the death of the Almighty."
Meaning: Spirits and God alike are asserted to be beyond death, God's immunity stated as the more absolute of the two.
Used when: Used to dismiss as impossible the idea that a powerful, entrenched interest could simply cease to exist or be removed.
Notes: The proverb pairs ẹbọra, spirit, with Olódùmarè in a single argument by escalation: even spirits do not die, so God, named second and treated as the stronger case, certainly does not. This entry is the fullest datum in this file for the idea, stated plainly rather than argued, that Olódùmarè is deathless in a way even lesser supernatural beings are.
Source: Owomoyela 5230.
Two patterns run through these nineteen proverbs that are worth naming.
God appears as the limit case, not as a character. Nearly every proverb here works by listing what an ordinary human or supernatural agent cannot do, and then naming God as the sole exception (entries 6, 9, 11, 15, 18, 19 all use this shape). The proverbs are not narratives about God acting; they are arguments that use God's unlimited capacity as the strongest available comparison.
Two proverbs (7 and 8) show the layered religious history of the region rather than a purely indigenous cosmology. Both name Islam specifically, and both are constructed on the same logical pattern as the more general Olódùmarè proverbs. Their presence in Owomoyela's collection alongside proverbs that do not mention Islam or Christianity shows that the proverb genre absorbed later religious vocabulary without changing its underlying argumentative habits. This is the same caution about layered religious history that applies elsewhere in this corpus, for instance at owe-iwa-character entry 26 regarding a possible biblical borrowing.
These are documented sayings about the supreme being, not liturgy and not instruction in worship. None of the nineteen proverbs here is a prayer or an invocation; each is a piece of everyday argument that happens to invoke Olódùmarè or Ọlọ́run as its authority.
04-cosmology/02-olodumare-and-olorun.md, for the doctrinal account of the supreme being against which these proverbs' usage can be checked.Twenty-two Yorùbá proverbs in which òrìṣà appear as the vehicle of an argument about human affairs, showing how ordinary speech treats the gods as present, particular, and sometimes named individually.
Fifty Yorùbá proverbs on ọ̀run-àpáàdì, orí and àyànmọ́ (fate and destiny), drawn from Owomoyela's dedicated section "On fate (and reciprocity)," showing destiny as chosen before birth, unappealable, yet compatible with real human effort.
What the sources actually attribute to Olodumare, the disputed etymologies, and the live scholarly argument over whether the supreme-being framing is indigenous Yoruba thought or a shape given to it by the missionary encounter.
Fifty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on character, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Forty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on the ọmọlúàbí ideal, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about telling the truth, the mechanics of lying and self-deception, and the value placed on a person whose word is reliable.