Following on the heels of the autobiographical monologue in Proverbs 8, a narrator’s voice interrupts in this chapter to set up a final showdown between Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly. As in previous chapters, the public square serves as the backdrop for the scene, which suggests not only that wisdom and folly are available to all who seek them but even more that the choices we make for either wisdom or folly play out in the life and health of the community. The two speeches by Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly thus highlight the doctrine of the two ways in Proverbs, with its opposing pairs of houses, paths, desires, and their ends in either life or death. These kinds of specific parallels between these two women make their contrast all the more clear.

At the center of chapter 9 we hear another refrain of the motto in Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (v. 10). The whole of wisdom and life pivots around the central decision to follow Yahweh and conform to his order or to reject his authority and face certain consequences. Furthermore, as in the last chapter (8:13, 22–31), Woman Wisdom represents both God’s wisdom in creating the world and the wisdom we need to live here.

This chapter divides neatly into three sections, with Wisdom and Folly flanking a central section of admonitions.

  I.O.  Fifth Interlude: Women, Ways, and Houses (9:1–18)

1.  Open House: Woman Wisdom’s Invitation to Her Feast (9:1–6)

2.  Intermission: Admonitions Small and Large (9:7–12)

3.  The House of the Dead: Dame Folly’s Seductive Temptations (9:13–18)

Symbolism in Biblical Feasts

Proverbs 9 is framed by two meals symbolizing the way of wisdom and the way of folly—one meal is magnificent and public, the other meager and private. The comment on 9:1–6 noted that this chapter holds close parallels to other ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, especially the Ugaritic Banquet of Lady Hurriya. It also mirrors Greek symposia as feasts given to encourage the discussion of the good life.

But we do not know whether the ancient Israelites who read Proverbs 9 knew anything of these ancient feasts. More likely, they received the chapter in the context of the OT and NT, whose authors so often borrow and repurpose themes and ideas to fill out their writing about the God of Israel and his work in the world. As a result, the meaning is found more within the scriptural context than in the cultural context.

Biblical feasts—such as those seen in 1 Kings 8:1–5, 65–66; Isaiah 55:1–2; 65:11–14, those mentioned in Esther and Daniel, and those found in Jesus’ life and teachings—share several things in common. Among these, the feasts emphasize the contrast of the righteous and wicked, life and death, and the two worlds of good and evil. In this way the feasts also echo the first meal in Genesis 3, in which humanity is given a moral test to choose between desires that are good and those that are evil. Wisdom, as seen many times, is a skill grounded in the disciplining of human desire that gives way to right thinking and right knowing before God.

The feasts also call to mind the ritual slaughter and sacrifice that was a part of Israel’s everyday life. We see an unmistakable connection at this point to Adam and Eve’s rebellious meal at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden. God’s response is to clothe them with sacrificed animals, foreshadowing Israel’s sacrificial offerings and meals in the law that provide for the restoration of God’s world and his people (Gen. 3:21). Indeed, as with those biblical feasts, the two women of Proverbs 9 symbolize an invitation into two types of covenants, one with the Lord of creation and one in the company that rejects him.

The meals also illumine our understanding of God and his kingdom by way of the imagination. In his book The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon alludes to the water and wine in Jesus’ first miracle:

Water come of age

in the vast pots of this old Cana, where the Word, in silence, orders up new wine. . . .

Until

(in Heaven it is alwaies Autumne) earth’s last best gift is brought to sere and velvet elegance,

To Wine indeed

To Water in excelsis.86

Capon goes on to write that when we imagine the scene of water and new creation in John 2:1–11, we see that “God made the world out of joy: He didn’t need it; He just thought it was a good thing.”87 Our world emerged out of generous joy. We note that the title of Capon’s book is borrowed from that climactic meal in Revelation 19:6–9, at which joy fills the songs of the elect. Surely Capon is supported by the psalmist’s recognition that God gave wine to “gladden” and bread to strengthen our hearts (Ps. 104:15).

In the wake of Adam, sin, and death Christians too often forget the essential goodness of the world at creation and the fact that Christ’s death and resurrection are making the world new again. But Scripture, and especially Psalms and Proverbs, will not leave this fallen world behind. Isaiah anticipates our future hope with “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Isa. 25:6).

In the NT a central part of our discipleship is our imaginative journey into the mysteries of this present and eternal feast in which we are a part. We are called to know “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,” “the immeasurable greatness of his power,” “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” and our “inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (Eph. 1:18, 19; 3:19; 1 Pet. 1:4). Woman Wisdom called her disciples to a journey to maturity grounded in a vision of creation in the past. But in Christ we have access to “him who is able to do far more than . . . we ask or [imagine]”88 in the present and the age to come (Eph. 3:20).

The Desire for Darkness

The pleasures of sin! And, even more, of sins we do in secret. Among the many images in his gospel, John often portrays Jesus as light, which stands in contrast to our former state of sin and darkness: “People loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). We do not simply seek darkness; we “love” it. There is a deep thrill in perversion, revenge, and rebellion; otherwise sin would be awfully easy to avoid, and Dame Folly’s offering in Proverbs 9:17 would be empty. Indeed, the pleasures of food, rebellion, and secrecy are all wrapped into her one immensely attractive temptation.

Christians can easily move from this truth to the distorted idea that all desire is evil. The obedient Christian life thus appears to us a chaste, bland, and boring allegiance to moral rules. The Puritans are often blamed for denying pleasure in this way, though this is an unfair caricature of what the Puritans actually believed. Still the idea reigns in many Christian circles today. All music, food, alcohol, sex, games, and laughter is condemned as inappropriate, whether explicitly or implicitly. But this sort of morality runs totally contrary to the biblical witness. Adam and Eve were free to create, eat, and enjoy sexual pleasures as long as they fit God’s moral order. The problem was never one of giving way to desire but rather one of setting desire on the wrong things. Things, it turns out, will be less pleasurable than what God has in store for us. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the problem is not that we desire too much but that we desire too little! It must be emphasized in this pleasure-confused culture that Woman Wisdom offers a much better feast than Dame Folly. And with her offer she points us to God’s full and good goal for us.

The pleasures of sin go hand in hand with our desire for secrecy. Our natural “love” of the darkness (John 3:19) reveals the shame that cannot be fully jettisoned from our sinful behavior. We know that we are flaunting something good and dangerous, and so we do our dirty deeds out of sight. The book of Judges captures something of this idea when it notes, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6; 21:25). When authority ceases to exist, we are able to adapt to the shame and to conduct ourselves in public as we would in private. And the consequences for us and for society are devastating.

Authority and True Freedom

This leads us back to the book’s motto at the center of the chapter: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Prov. 9:10; cf. 1:7). In this chapter the fear of the Lord functions on at least two important and related levels.

First, the saying establishes definitive authority. Wisdom and Folly are only representatives pointing to two ways. The women no doubt evoke a sense of power and appeal, which reminds us that life’s journey naturally pulls our desires in many directions. But the poem transcends the women, calling forth echoes from the creation, the exodus, the law, and Sinai to declare Yahweh’s definitive authority. This assures us that the consequences described along Wisdom and Folly’s paths are certain to follow and are grounded in a deep and permanent order.

Today the idea of authority is often met by skepticism and resentment. Abuses of authority throughout history add force to the romantic sentiment that the only truth is the one that abides within one’s own warm bosom. And so the only authority and only remaining moral absolute is to be true to oneself.89

But to seek our own desires is surely a recipe for enslavement rather than freedom. Paul warns the church in Galatia against the bondage of the “flesh.” Anyone in Christ is “no longer a slave, but a son” (Gal. 4:7)—a child under a new, good, and loving authority that has set us free from a corrupt and damning slavery to the law and to the self. We have the freedom found in life in the Spirit, loosed from our former bondage to the “desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16–18). This freedom in the Spirit is not freedom for license but an authoritative freedom for love and the gifts of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23).

Woman Wisdom similarly appeals to a true and good authority that leads to a great feast. The fear of the Lord results not in slavery to boredom but freedom of delight, divine fellowship, and life (cf. Prov. 8:30–31; 10:27). Peter’s first epistle imagines this same principle of authority at work in Christ. On the one hand he says that Jesus has been raised as Lord and King of all (1 Pet. 1:3) and is the “Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:25). Peter calls us to live before God, our rightful ruler and authority, in “fear” (1 Pet. 1:17; 2:17). But on the other hand, as our loving Savior, Christ has secured for us an “inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Pet. 1:4), “things into which angels long to look” (1 Pet. 1:12). His is good authority, and life in him is true freedom and pleasure.

Second, the fear of the Lord is also a call to live in unceasing awe and wonder. The Hebrew midwives in Exodus who were instructed to kill all the male children born to Hebrew women had every reason to be afraid of Pharaoh. “But,” Exodus says, “the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them” (Ex. 1:17). It made no sense for them to risk Pharaoh’s wrath unless they had such an awesome fear of God, who is greater, and knew that somehow this God could compensate for, or be greater than, their suffering under the king of Egypt. Such an attitude is not that same trembling fear one has before another human being but is a loving wonder of something altogether good and transcendent. Godly fear is obedience that flows from an imagination grounded in faith and hope. In the section on feasts we highlighted phrases from Paul’s prayers that God would give us wisdom, understanding, and insight into eschatological realities that surpass ordinary reason: exceeding love, an eternal inheritance, and infinite power. Our assurance of this future is what makes it possible, and meaningful, to suffer in this present life (Col. 1:5).

It would be a mistake not to mention a remarkable parallel on the day of Pentecost. On this day, when the Spirit is poured out upon the church, Luke shows us a scene of the disciples gathered in a symbolic feast for the breaking of bread. He goes on to record, “Awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:43–44). Luke gives us a prototypical scene in which fear (awe), obedience, and feasting come together in great joy in the Spirit-filled community. This is the same community to which we bind ourselves in membership when we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper and with which we share our lives and possessions in the love of Christ.Proverbs 9

Overview ofProverbs 10–29

Proverbs 10–29

Proverbs 1–9; 30–31 is made up almost entirely of much longer proverb-poems. By way of contrast, the center of Proverbs (chs. 10–29) is composed entirely of short sayings and small clusters of sayings. A cursory reading of some five hundred sayings in chapters 10–29 tends to give off a sense of randomness and needless repetition. But a closer reading reveals finer detail and structure built into these sayings, as well as a conscious use of repetition as an intended part of the flow.

These sayings are often grouped with larger structural issues in the background—for example, the relationship between Yahweh and the king (16:1–15) or sayings about fools (26:1–12). The chapters also progress toward a greater diversity of types of sayings (e.g., better-than, disjointed, litotes, pairs), as well as increasing complexity and violent imagery (esp. chs. 23–28).

  II.  The First Solomonic Collection (10:1–22:16)

A.  Solomon’s Intro to Wisdom: Contrasts of the Wise-Righteous and Wicked-Fools90 (10:1–15:33)

1.  Righteous or Wicked (10:1–12:28)

2.  Wise or Foolish (13:1–15:33)

B.  Solomon’s Advanced Wisdom: Theology and Kingship (16:1–22:16)

  III.  Words of the Wise (22:17–24:22)

  IV.  More Sayings of the Wise (24:23–34)

  V.  Solomonic Proverbs Gathered by the Men of Hezekiah (25:1–29:27)

Pedagogy in the Poetry of Proverbs

The pedagogical development in Proverbs shows an obvious progress from the urgent poetry of the parents in chapters 1–9, to very basic “antithetical” sayings—this versus that—in chapters 10–15, to more varied sayings in chapters 17–22, and then to riddles and shocking images of pain and social disorder in chapters 23–29. This is followed by what is arguably the most complex material, chapter 30. On top of all that, the later chapters introduce hermeneutical puzzles of “fittingness” in 26:1–12 and the intense pain sayings in chapters 23–27; it is hard to miss the steady movement from basic sayings to complex and shocking puzzles. Wisdom is, after all, a journey, and early lessons in life always provide the foundation for deeper learning and insight later. This is at the very least a point we are meant to take away from Jesus’ growing in wisdom (Luke 2:40–52).

The commentary on Proverbs 25–26 will look more closely at two specific aspects of the pedagogy of Proverbs. First is the role of the intense pain sayings, in particular the way in which these sayings influence readers beneath the surface of conscious awareness, engaging their emotions, reasoning, memory, and social behavior. Second is the way in which the hermeneutical sayings in the book train readers in the skill of situational reasoning. That is, how does one apply moral principles within a constantly changing world?

Lack of such wisdom can obviously lead to suffering, poverty, shame, and more. These are all common lessons in Proverbs. But wisdom also works to open one’s eyes to God’s work in the world. As Jesus says to the Jews,

John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon.” The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is justified by all her children. (Luke 7:33–35)

Simply put, the Jews lacked the wisdom needed to interpret a new and puzzling state of affairs. Locked into old perceptions, they could not see a new world emerging in Christ.

Order and Disorder in Proverbs

The obvious progress through major sections in Proverbs leads to discussion of the arrangement of the individual sayings in chapters 10–29. Are the proverbs in these chapters randomly arranged, or have they been ordered with some highly detailed plan in mind? Scholarly answers to these questions range from minimalist to maximalist extremes. In his commentary Ernest Lucas offers a helpful guide to the frequent impasses reached in a highly subject enterprise. He compares his own list of clusters and groups to those of Heim and Waltke, who arrive at their findings independently and using different methods. The scholars’ findings overlap far more often than not. Lucas goes on to observe that this kind of “inter-subjective-verification” is already an established practice used within the natural sciences to confirm studies involving high degrees of subjectivity.98

In the end some patterns are simply undeniable. And this very fact inevitably sends us looking for structures and patterns elsewhere. At this point the minimalist interpreter reacts with anxious concern about overly subjective readings of the book. This is an honest worry. But the ambiguity in this process becomes magnetic and unavoidable once we begin, for it draws us back again and again to look for the flow and context of the sayings. In the same way one works on a jigsaw puzzle, making mistakes and finding solutions, so it goes with reading the proverbs. This process rewards the attentive and devoted reader, shaping his ability to find patterns and order in the seeming randomness of life. And this skill of finding patterns is the urgent pedagogical goal of Proverbs—not so that we know how to outline the book but so that we can hone the skill of discerning God’s created order and applying it to the events we face in our daily lives.

Moral Accounting and Moral Order

The creational order and the moral order go hand in hand with the ideas of wisdom and folly and righteousness and wickedness. Since the Reformation, Protestant traditions have often emphasized a moral accounting metaphor for their statement of the gospel: we sinned, Jesus paid the penalty, and the accounts are all settled. While these statements are true, they are not complete. In this framework God can be thought to have made the world only to make this act of salvation possible. Dirt, trees, birds, oceans, and the rest of creation are merely incidental to this exchange of wickedness and righteousness.

But this leaves the doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection as odd appendages in Christian theology. It also leaves little to say about God’s seven “it was good” statements that describe the world in Genesis 1. Proverbs helps us to restore the connection between the good world of creation and the good work of Jesus.

The gospel of the accountants—we might call it—essentially focuses us on Good Friday. And so it tends to overlook the greater significance of Jesus’ incarnation in human flesh—the dust of the earth—and the good news of Jesus’s body raised in the resurrection, making all things new. With an accounting view of things we can end up with a distorted picture of human nature and our moral responsibility in this world.

In other words an accounting view of things misses the fact that our human moral responsibility (human agency, guilt, salvation, and justification) is an aspect, or reflection, of the order in creation. What Proverbs calls wisdom is the knowledge of the order of creation. And so wisdom is a larger concept than morality. Morality is a specific application of wisdom to issues of right and wrong action or human agency.

To put this another way, moral acts of right and wrong are grounded in a larger order of creation: morality flows from universal structures in the created world, but those larger structures may not be reduced simply to morality. For an example we might think of acts of folly, such as sleeping during the day rather than the night, not washing one’s clothes, or ignoring a beautiful sunset. We might want to label all of these behaviors foolish because they do not conform to the order of the created world—clothes need washing and sunsets were made for appreciation. But none of these actions is necessarily sinful. They may violate the created order but not the moral order.

We can turn this around with examples of wisdom. If I plan ahead for a busy week, I have been wise. If I choose my friends carefully, I have been wise. Not doing these kinds of things might eventually lead me to sin. But at the moment these are actions of wisdom and folly, not wickedness and righteousness—created order, not yet moral order.

In my years of teaching and pastoring I have found that many students and parishioners want to collapse all actions into right and wrong or sinful or not sinful. They collapse human action to morality and, more often than not, live rather carelessly and immaturely in what seem to be nonmoral issues. Now, I do certainly desire for them to see that God wants us to put away sin and act with righteousness and justice. But I also want them to appreciate that God wants us to grow in prudence and wisdom—to discern the order of creation in a way that helps us direct our lives and vocations to fit the designs of God’s creation.

This larger view of wisdom helps us grasp the complexity and glory of our human nature and the full extent of the gospel. We were created not only to keep moral accounts with God, though that is part of it, but to live out our vocational lives in the creation with his gift of wisdom (Prov. 24:3–4). Much of the biblical law, in fact, reflects the larger created order and not simply issues of morality. The Tabernacle, for example, symbolized the place of God’s holiness, but its aesthetic beauty and carefully outlined proportions also pointed to the glory of creation (cf. Ps. 37:4), which reflects that of its Creator.

We should now be able to appreciate the way in which Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection are three distinct moments in one work of redemption. In the sequence of the three, the moral and the created orders of the world are restored—creation sitting, significantly, in the outer positions of incarnation and resurrection around the central place of the cross. As a result, we are restored to righteousness before God and given wisdom to get back to our God-given work in the creation, which is ever being made new before us (cf. Eph. 1:8–10).Proverbs 10–29

Proverbs 10