Ryan Patrick O’Dowd
The world is in danger for lack of life-giving maxims. We are in a train rushing ahead at top speed, no signals visible. The planet is going it knows not where, its law has failed it; who will give it back the sun?
Antoine G. Sertillanges
Overview
Proverbs is the Bible’s preeminent book of the “life-giving maxims”1 we call wisdom. Readers should recognize from the start that the very ideas of “wisdom” and “Wisdom Literature” have been disputed for well over a century, and increasingly so in recent years. Did the ancient authors of Proverbs think they were writing about wisdom? And, if so, did this book belong to a group of books we call Wisdom Literature? We will address these important questions below under Genre and Literary Features.
Proverbs is the least complicated book to consider in this area of debate, for what else would we call it if not wisdom? This is a book about steering life within good paths. Just as the sun runs its course in Psalm 19, so wisdom takes us through life on our way to greater life and righteousness (Ps. 19:4–7). There is a sense in which wisdom is a concept too broad and rich for any single definition. In this way it is much like time, love, or faith—each is familiar yet difficult to define.
The whole of human history has felt the need to gather and pass on the advice man needs in order to live safely and prosperously in a constantly changing world, one requiring countless decisions minute by minute, day after day.2 Most cultures have traditions of codifying such advice in writings and oral sayings. In the Christian Bible no other book suits this role of generational instruction more definitively than this collection of 915 sayings.
And yet Proverbs is more than merely a list of nearly a thousand short sentences. Many of the sayings have been gathered into poems, especially in chapters 1–9; 30–31. Far surpassing a long list of independent sentences, these groups of poems and clusters in Proverbs undergird a worldview, a storied picture about the world, human nature, our greatest risks, and our most profitable opportunities. Within this storied image the wise life is one lived imaginatively in a world ordered by a just, merciful, and righteous Creator.
It is also important to know from the start that Proverbs displays a palpable sense of progress from its introductory and motivational material in chapters 1–15 to more complex and sometimes shocking sayings in chapters 16–30, and then to a picturesque and idyllic ending in chapter 31. We will discuss all of this in more detail below. Having this bigger picture of Proverbs in mind will go a long way toward understanding how the individual sayings play their roles in their particular places.
Title
The English title of the book, “Proverbs,” comes from the Hebrew mishle, a word that captures a wide range of sayings (e.g., Num. 23:7; 1 Sam. 24:13; Ezek. 17:1). In fact most instances of the word occur outside of this book. As for Proverbs itself, 1:6 describes the book as a guide to understanding not only the “proverb” but also the “saying” and the “riddle.” Types of sayings are discussed further under Genre and Literary Features. It is sufficient here simply to note that, just as psalm stands for a great variety of prayers, so proverb summarizes an impressive diversity of short sayings.
Author
Proverbs 1:1 labels Solomon as the author of the book. However, the book also credits several other sources, including an anonymous group of “the wise” (22:17; 24:23), the “men of Hezekiah” (who seemed to be collectors; cf. 25:1), Agur (30:1), and King Lemuel and his mother (31:1).
In this light Solomon’s name could have been used in an honorific way, just as the book of Psalms in its entirety is credited to David, even though nearly half of the psalms are anonymous or composed by authors other than David (the sons of Korah, Moses, Solomon, Asaph, etc.). But Solomon certainly spoke many proverbs—1 Kings mentions three thousand—and it is reasonable to think that many are included among the 915 here. With the exception of Jesus, Solomon is the supreme example of royal wisdom in Scripture (1 Kings 4:29; 5:12). As we will see in the commentary, Solomon’s life of wisdom and his insatiable love for women make a natural literary comparison with teachings and warnings in chapters 1–9. But his story in 1 Kings also reveals a man who ends life on the opposite path he recommends to us (1 Kings 11:1–13).
As is clear from the text, Proverbs is a literary anthology of many oral and written sayings. We know little, if anything, about the original source of these sayings besides the reference to Solomon. Proverbs are, in their most basic sense, sayings of people from every background and stratum in society. The proverb scholar Archer Taylor once insightfully defined a proverb as “the wisdom of many and the wit of one” and “a saying current among the folk.”3 Wise ideas are usually passed down in vague terms until someone conjures up a clever string of words that stick in our memory and imagination—“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch” or “The early bird gets the worm.” This is what makes a proverb more than mere advice. Like Hezekiah and “the wise” later in the book, Solomon appears to have been a collector and refiner of these folk sayings.
In the end we must be grateful for the ingenuity of innumerable ancestors before us who combined these words and wisdom that were collected by yet others for us to find as a treasure in this book.
Date and Occasion
Just as Proverbs’ authorship is impossible to tie down, so the date of these sayings is impossible to calculate, for each saying has its own history beyond its coming to be placed in the book. At best we can make some educated guesses for the time that parts of Proverbs came together. The Solomonic sections are often believed to be the oldest (Prov. 10:1–22:16; 25:1–29:27) and the frame of the book the youngest (chs. 1–9; 30–31). But there are also signs of late editing of what we think to be the older sections.
Bernd Schipper argues rather persuasively that Proverbs 2 was written later as a summary or table of contents for chapters 1–9.4 His research is addressed in the comments on 2:1–22. Whatever we make of his arguments, there does seem to be evidence of shaping of these early and latter chapters to suit Israel’s changing social climate.
Schipper is also among a number of scholars who observe development in the two centuries before Jesus, in which wisdom and Jewish Torah (law) were increasingly aligned.5 We can see the marriage of wisdom and law already implied in many places in the OT. The law of Moses would make Israel “wise and understanding” in the eyes of the nations (Deut. 4:6). And, as mentioned above, the natural courses of the sun in the sky parallel the law, which makes “wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7). Or again, “Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies” (Ps. 119:98). God gave Israel a law that enabled it to live fruitfully, obediently, and creatively in this world.
When Israel went into exile between 720 and 587 BC, it no longer had its king, courts, temple, or ritual life. If there were any practical use in the law any more, it would be in the way it helped the people live where they were, dispersed among powerful nations like Persia and Greece. In time, the terms “wisdom” and “law” (Hb. torah) would come to be used interchangeably.
Agur’s sayings in Proverbs 30 and the poem of the valiant woman in 31:10–31 can be seen to fit logically into these later stages in Israel’s history, when law and wisdom are nearly synonymous. In the case of Proverbs 30 Agur has no royal connections. Thus his voice of wisdom late in Israel’s history stands in contrast to earlier wisdom from Solomon, Hezekiah, and Lemuel, who ruled prior to the exile. These men represent the old world of the law and wisdom and empires that has come to naught. Agur represents the new world. Furthermore, these kings and their impure religion had failed the nation, even though their inspired wisdom still stands. Thus Agur’s pursuit of wisdom is also far less optimistic about kingship and about the prospects of wisdom, bringing Israel into the flourishing world once imagined by the law.
The valiant woman in chapter 31, meanwhile, arises as a word of hope and affirmation of the material life of work. The absence of the king and Israel’s ritual life with priests and a temple signals that wisdom is the means for Israel to adapt to a new era. We examine these ideas further in the comments on those chapters below.
Genre and Literary Features
For the book of Proverbs, historical background is far less important or even interesting than the form and function of the book’s unique blend of poetry. Most of the book’s literary features are unique to this book.
Is Wisdom a Genre?
As noted in the opening, determining the genre of Proverbs is a difficult and controversial question. To assume that Proverbs is unquestionably “wisdom” or a part of OT “Wisdom Literature” is to have been more influenced by recent categories of higher criticism than by the ancients who first wrote and compiled these books. According to Will Kynes, the first use of the term wisdom literature occurred in 1851, from the German scholar Johann Bruch.6 This genre designation was adopted rapidly within the academy and the church and without any significant critical reflection for over a hundred years. By then the category had stuck and left lasting consequences in its wake.7
This is not to say that Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes are not concerned with wisdom. Rather, the point is to recognize that a category such as wisdom can predetermine how we read a book or set of books. This behavior is often called framing, since our starting category, or frame, constrains what we see. In table 2.1 the left side lists the order of OT books in the Greek Bible that was used for modern English Bibles’ ordering, while the right side lists the order in the ancient Hebrew canon.
In English and ancient Greek Bibles the order of the books naturally favors putting Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes together among the other poetic writings. This helps us to set them apart as wisdom. The tendency to read them apart from the rest of the OT only becomes louder and stronger after AD 1851.
But if we start with the broad, ranging collection of the “Writings,” our eyes and ears cannot help but be opened beyond “wisdom,” searching for parallels from a much larger context—Ruth as background to David’s lineage, Esther as an account of divine providence, Lamentations as a poetry of complaint, and the like.
Positioned just after Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, Job is more naturally heard in the context of Psalms 37; 49; 73 and the many lament psalms. Beyond the book’s frequent use of the words “wisdom” and “understanding,” Job includes no individual proverb sayings and bears only the slightest resemblance to the content in Proverbs 30. Yet, like Proverbs 30, Job holds many parallels with the Torah, offering a challenge to Deuteronomy’s assurances of blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 27–28). Considered alongside the law, Job also draws our attention to rituals, offerings, and laments found there. Scholars also notice Job’s careful avoidance of a style or form fitting other parts of the OT, which allows the book to echo beyond the Psalms to biblical prophets and historical writings.
Ecclesiastes, meanwhile, also shares intertextual connections with the lament psalms, reinforced by its position next to Lamentations. Considered apart from the other two wisdom books, the book’s echoes of Moses’ Torah, the prophets, and Israel’s history become more apparent. As with Job, the insistence of Ecclesiastes on varied forms of writing keeps readers from tying it to any particular genre. The implied connection to Solomon also weaves the book into the last monarch’s history and the fall of the kingdom.
Proverbs, likewise, represents more than just wisdom, or wise advice for understanding the world and navigating life—although it certainly does that as well. Proverbs has many strong connections to the law, Deuteronomy in particular. Its characterizations of Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly also share countless parallels with the symbolic power of women in Ruth and the prophets.8 These same passages reflect practices at the heart of Israel’s cultic, or priestly, life.
Therefore, though we can identify many important connections between Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, we must not then narrow the meaning or reach of these books to this small relationship alone. Maintaining soft boundaries around the genre of each book enables an awareness of Israel’s many other writings, its laws, and its history. It also encourages us to read with ears and eyes wide open to encounter these books always anew.
In other words, rather than beginning with a genre of wisdom literature, we do better to start with the wider category, or even genre, of wisdom. Wisdom is universal through time and culture, indicating the trusted insights of one’s ancestors and the knack for living life well. Common wisdom ideas include following a path, controlling one’s desires, mastering a craft, avoiding danger, and growing in understanding. Such a broad definition reveals wisdom in almost every genre of the Bible and in particular places such as the Joseph narrative (Genesis 37–50), the construction of the tabernacle (Exodus 35ff.), many psalms (e.g., Psalms 19; 37; 49; 73; 112), and the life of Daniel. And yet identifying wisdom as a category in those places does not reduce everything to a single genre but honors the diversity and intertextual connections between the whole of Scripture.
Literary Features
The discussion of title and author, above, examined the Hebrew word mishle (sing. mashal), which broadly captures many types of poetic forms in the book as well as the way in which sayings become crafted in a form that sticks in the memory. The most basic proverb format is a parallel saying or admonition composed of a Topic (T) and a Comment (C).
(a) Absent oxen (T), the manger is clean (C),
(b) but crops abound (T) by the strength of the ox (C) (Prov. 14:4 AT).
This parallel structure makes a comparison that usually requires us to tease out the lesson, much like a riddle. In this case lines a and b are contrasting—what some scholars call antithetical. There is no moral right or wrong in having oxen or not, nor a simple equation for how many oxen one should own. Instead the image reminds us of lessons about diligence, about nagging and inconvenient aspects of work, and even about laziness and avoidance.
Sayings can also be additive or synonymous:
(a) Whoever winks the eye (T) causes trouble (C),
(b) and a babbling fool (T) will come to ruin (C) (10:10).
In this case lines a and b make comparative points about delinquent types of behavior and their consequences for individuals and the community.
A handful of the proverbs have only one line, or else condense the topic and comment almost into one:
The leech has two daughters (T): give, give (C) (30:15a AT).9
This provocative image of the leech resembles many proverbs dispersed at the end of the book, which reverse the normal Topic-Comment order in the sayings to Comment-Topic. Consider this example from 25:11:
ESV
A word fitly spoken (T)
is like apples of gold in a setting of silver (C).
AT (following Hebrew word order)
Like apples of gold in settings of silver (C)
is a word fitly spoken (T).
Reflecting on the Hebrew word order allows one to appreciate the poetry and, ultimately, the meaning of each saying. After all, when starting with a provocative Comment—especially a shocking or painful one—one cannot help but try to anticipate the Topic.10 This is discussed further in the comments on 23:1–26:28.
Beyond the individual sayings, Proverbs displays larger literary structures. As discussed in the commentary, the parallels may run for three to five lines or even string together an entire poem (1:1–9:18; 26:1–12; 30:1–31:31). These larger poems create the structures and images of a worldview (cf. Overview).
These larger poetic structures combine with the individual sayings to shape our practical and ethical reasoning—a process that requires some explanation. In broad scope the context of Proverbs 1–9 puts the whole book into a quasi-fictional scenario; it is a world very much like our own but charged with cosmic forces that give context to each decision. We naturally and unavoidably enter this world through its characters—the parents, the son, the foolish, and the wise. The individual sayings in chapters 10–29 are even smaller literary units that embed us into a chain of situations that require moral judgment. The philosopher Mark Johnson explains it this way: “The ‘self’ . . . develops its identity by inhabiting characters embedded within socially shared roles and by creatively appropriating those roles, even to the point of coauthoring new ones.”11
But it is more than stories and pictures that do this work within us. Indeed, the stories and scenarios provoke our nonconscious nervous system, sparking emotions and particular lines of reasoning. The Nobel Laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman specializes in the area of (faulty) decision-making processes. He confirms that our moral reasoning is constrained by our most powerful emotions—envy, regret, and avoidance of pain most especially.12 Thus the contrasts between the prospering of the righteous and wise and the demise of the wicked and foolish are not so much guarantees as compact literary devices that frame our moral imagination with emotions tied to the outcomes of our decisions.
As we will see in chapters 23–26, images of physical and emotional pain dominate the sayings.13 Unfortunately many English translations water down these concrete bodily images or resort to elementary or abstract explanations: eye, hand, foot, and kidney become sight, work, journey, and instinct. We can probably all appreciate the radical change this has on the imaginative and emotional power of the proverbs.14
Theology of Proverbs
The literary shape and form of Proverbs go hand in hand with its theological message. The book opens by intertwining speech from cosmic women and the voice of the parents, the former providing views of creation behind the curtain and the latter a view of practical life in the here and now (chs. 1–9). The book ends with climactic poems about work and wonder that embody the full breadth of the teaching the book (chs. 30–31). The intervening chapters (chs. 10–29) work out wisdom in the most practical aspects of daily life. We arrange these teachings under five headings.
Wisdom Is Grounded in the Created Order
God designed a world characterized by rhythms, structures, boundaries, and fecundity (cf. Gen. 1:31; Job 28:1–28; Ps. 104:1–30; Prov. 3:19–20; 8:22–31; etc.). What we call “order” here turns out to underlie every dimension of human life, such as administering justice; waking and sleeping; working and eating; walking a path that is upright, smooth, and straight as opposed to debased and crooked; pursuing life rather than death and safety rather than danger; and knowing when to speak and when not to speak. Solving a puzzle requires there to be a solution, an order—and so too with the navigation of human life in a constantly changing world. Creation order plays out on at least three levels in Proverbs.
First, the creation order provides the structures necessary for justice, ethics, and morality. We see this in many places in Scripture, probably most clearly in Psalm 19. Its first six verses rehearse the natural rhythms of creation, with God’s world bounding into the work assigned to its particular seasons. Psalm 19:7 then turns to the life-giving Torah—the “teaching or law”—that is for humans what natural rhythms are for the cosmos and for the planets. It makes us “wise.” Put plainly, our moral and ethical life is part of the texture and structure built into the universe. In contrast to the many ways in which we buck against the moral order, Psalms and Proverbs provide a model in which that order is met with love and joy (cf. Pss. 19:1–7; 104:24; Prov. 8:30–31). Doing the law begins with delight in God’s law.
A modern secular dualism has developed in western culture, for the idea of a natural and created order has become increasingly popular as avid conservationists raise the issues of pollution and more. Many of these active naturalists tend to be the most resistant to moral order and divine law in other areas of life. Eat and drink, have sex, and feed every desire for entertainment and wealth, they say—but do not mess with the squirrels, birds, or whales, or their wilderness or oceans. We are fine to live in keeping with the natural order of the world but rebel against its moral order as something that is stifling.
As we will see, Proverbs is well aware of the human tendency to push back against God’s divinely given moral order. Its creative images, motivational speeches, and inspiring poems seek to lure us back to tame our desires to fit God’s designs rather than our own.
Second, creation order captures the whole realm of practicality, skill, and social interactions. We might think immediately here of the “wisdom” and “understanding” of those who constructed the tabernacle, its furnishings (Ex. 31:1–11; 35:11), and the temple (1 Kings 7:14). Practical wisdom knows when to speak and remain silent; when to plant, rest, and harvest; how to spot a fool; and how to recognize a good deal and a deal too good to be true.
Finally, creation order introduces us to wisdom needed to navigate divine providence, especially as it relates to the problems of wealth and poverty—why some people flourish while others suffer. Raymond Van Leeuwen arranges the proverbs in the book into four distinct quadrants: wealth leads to riches, wickedness leads to poverty, wealth leads to poverty, and wickedness leads to riches.15 Most of the book supports the first two relationships: righteousness is rewarded and wickedness punished. And yet, as we know from experience, life gives us inconsistent outcomes: the righteous are robbed, the young get cancer, and the wicked often prosper (cf. the book of Job; Psalms 49; 73). The sayings that fit into the final two quadrants acknowledge this enigmatic problem while yet affirming confidence in creation order. The book does not solve the problem of contradictions in life. Instead it leaves this problem to the limits of human understanding, calling us away from pragmatism and despair to an ethics grounded in faith, providence, and hope.
Wisdom Appeals to Reason and Desire
At times in history, especially during the Enlightenment, philosophers and theologians believed ethics to be a matter of reason alone. Emotions only cloud good judgment, they thought. If Immanuel Kant represents this belief, then his opponent, David Hume, represents the opposite. Hume argues, often persuasively, that “reason is the slave of the passions.” Reason comes along only after our actions in order to justify whatever the passions decided.
To Hume’s credit, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is among many researchers who have demonstrated the power—even the necessity—of emotions in ethical reasoning.16 The psychopath, we now know, is a person who reasons without any interference from emotion. Without empathy the psychopath’s ethical reasoning becomes totally inhuman. On the other end of the spectrum, the baby acts almost purely on emotion, with very little developed reason to influence decision making.
The truth of our nature lies within the interactions of reason and emotion, and this is precisely what we find in Proverbs—carefully reasoned arguments alongside highly charged emotional, even sexual, appeals to decision making. We will see this in at least two major places in the chapters below.
First, the calls from Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly in chapters 1–9 combine rational argument with sexual appeal. Scholars have long noticed that over half of the sayings in these nine chapters concern women, their advice, their promises, their enticements, and their blessings and dangers. Both the rational and the emotional combine as Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly call out in the public square, “Turn in here . . . !”
Second, reason and emotion are seeded into the advice in the individual proverbs of chapters 10–29. The introduction to chapters 10–29 below describes how these proverbs work to shape our ethical reasoning. Proverbs aims to teach us to reorder our desires to seek God above all else—especially in the call to the “fear of Yahweh.” With our desire focused upon the satisfaction in God alone, our reason and emotions are better enabled to navigate the complex moral landscape before us.
Wisdom Comes through Tradition
I am a debtor to all, to all I am bounden
I have been taught by dreams and fantasies
Learned from the friendly and darker phantoms
And got great knowledge and courtesy from the dead
Kinsmen and kinswomen, ancestors and friends
But from two mainly
Who gave me birth.17
The first nine chapters of Proverbs weave together the instructions of parents and the appeals of Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly. Together they ask, “Which tradition will you choose?”
Modern western culture has an uneasy relationship with tradition. In matters of religion, medicine, ethics, clothing, and many customs and manners there is a sense that newer is better than old, that the future is better than the past. But we also have a fondness for nostalgia. We like old records, cars, and other collectibles. Our universities and our military market themselves through the appeal to tradition, and many of their strengths are rooted in long-held practices and beliefs. Weddings and sports are deeply traditioned as well. Graduations, holidays, birthday parties serve this purpose also.
In fact, the rejection of tradition is a tradition of its own. Goth culture resists the traditional by making a new tradition with new rules. Progressivism is allegiance to a historic set of ideas that resist the perceived weaknesses of conservatism. And so, as we head into Proverbs and say that it is traditioned, what we really mean is that wisdom is a very particular tradition—a matter of paying attention to one set of voices over another.
Parents and Woman Wisdom are the main voices of wisdom in Proverbs. They are supported by the “the wise,” friends, and the gray-haired, all who seek to protect us from Dame Folly and her violent band of fools. Still, the parents and Wisdom dominate the first nine chapters, which ought to lead us to ask why this book volleys between these two authorities rather than others.
This pattern can be explained, at least in part, by appeal to Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, a book about growing up in a fringe sect of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).18 Early in the book Westover tells of her father purging all the milk and honey in the home based on his divine insight when reading Isaiah 7:15. Among countless exegetical problems, the father’s interpretation of this verse is wildly subjective. He has, to bring it back to Proverbs, absolutely no grounding in the church or its reception of this passage over time. And he abused a family for years without the broader checks of tradition. Believing himself to be a wise parental source of tradition, he becomes a fool.
So, yes, Proverbs has an optimistic air about parents and tradition. But that should not lead readers to regard the book as naïve or idealistic. A closer reading of the book reveals its unapologetic realism. Like children, parents are prone to err. And so God puts children, parents, and others on notice that true wisdom is found only in the tradition of those who “fear the Lord” (Prov. 1:7). One cannot have wisdom (or society) without tradition, but not every tradition counts, and thus heeding wisdom’s call is a task that never ceases.
Wisdom Is Learned in Ritual
Ritual is a close cousin of tradition.19 It is uncommon for scholars to connect Proverbs with Jewish ritual, but this is almost certainly because they erect strong, artificial divisions between historical, moral, and priestly law on the one hand and wisdom literature on the other. The OT comes off looking like a mishmash of disconnected texts. But these artificial divisions blind us to important links between the books in Israel’s “Writings” and the rest of the OT (cf. Genre and Literary Features).
How was wisdom to be passed from parents to children if not through rituals? Looking closely at the OT, we find family instruction woven throughout Israel’s regular daily practices and religious festivals. Deuteronomy, for example, admonishes parents to teach their children at ritual moments during each morning, day, and night (Deut. 6:6–9, 20–24; 11:18–21). The same pattern occurs at the feasts of Passover and of Booths and at the setting of memorial stones in Joshua, ritualized passages that require the children to ask their fathers, “What do these mean to you?” (Ex. 12:26; Josh. 4:6). Dru Johnson frames the setting this way:
The son needs to grasp the father’s interpretation of memorial stones (Josh. 4:6), the meaning of the ritualized lamb meal at [Passover] (Ex. 13:14), the significance of booth-living in the Sinai (Lev. 23:41–43), and the Torah’s instruction writ large (Deut. 6:20). These rites were not meant to pass along mere facts of the matter, but to create recognition and discernment within Israel.20
These regular teachings shaped the way families understood their present in light of the past and future.
We find countless images of festival life in Proverbs: houses, feasting, wine, public gatherings—all in the larger context of educating Israel’s youth. Scholars also frequently note the strong connections between the feasts in Proverbs 1–9 and the ancient Greek symposia, where people gathered around meals to talk about wisdom. These parallels reinforce the fact that festival meals shape us. And yes, popcorn, hotdogs, and beer at patriotic ball games and NASCAR races have culture-shaping power.
Furthermore, in the order of the Hebrew canon, Proverbs is followed by the books called the “scrolls,” some of which were read during Israel’s annual festivals. Pulling all of this together, we come away with a picture of Israel’s ritual seasons with regular discussions and teachings that drew on Israel’s law and history in search of meaning and wise application in life. Parents, pastors, teachers, and church members all need to ask themselves what rituals and practices are shaping the next generation in their care.
Wisdom Is a Gift Received with Wonder and Gratitude
Proverbs begins with a sequence of entreaties for us to hear and to get wisdom and understanding. This is our invitation to inhabit God’s ordered world as a gift. Theologian Paul Griffiths captures this wonderfully:
The world was given as a cosmos, a vast and ordered beauty, whose knowing members contribute to that beauty by appreciative and responsive contemplation, which is their mode of offering participatory gratitude to the giver, and whose unknowing members contribute to it just by being what they are. . . . The gift of the cosmos and all its components is the archetype and paradigm of all gifts because, strangely, it brings into being the gift it gives and those to whom the gift is given: it is a gift without preconditions because it was preceded by nothing other than the act of giving. All other gifts therefore depend upon this one, and all, to the extent they are gifts, image this one. Creation is, then, prevenient gift.21
Griffiths goes on to claim, “‘Creature’ and ‘gift’ are the basic terms in a Christian ontology.”22 In other words, when we ask about what is and what exists, the answer is Creator and gift—a truth at the heart of Psalm 8.
Turning to Proverbs we read,
The Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity. (2:6–7)
And then in chapter 8 we encounter Woman Wisdom dancing, laughing, and rejoicing at the completion of the world and its creatures that inhabit it (8:30–31). The epistle from James echoes her response when it states, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).
We are far too prone to the entitled attitude that we run this world or that its goods are naturally ours. On the contrary, we exist as the result of a great and generous Giver. The wisdom journey, conceived as a perfect gift, starts with gratitude and a sense of responsibility that leads to stewardship (Pss. 8:1–9; 95:6). But it also commends a disposition of wonder, or “responsive contemplation,” as Griffiths calls it. As we will see below, the often repeated motto in Proverbs (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”; 1:7; 9:10; etc.) calls for awe, stillness, contemplation, and wonder at the mere fact of the world around us.
As Proverbs draws to a close in chapter 30, it leads us in a lengthy meditation on wonder, punctuated by these memorable words of Agur:
Three things are too wonderful for me;
four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship in the heart of the sea,
and the way of a man with a woman. (vv. 18–19 AT)
Gratitude and awe are our indispensable companions for the pages ahead as we heed the call of creation to gaze on the world and respond with a worshiping obedience to its Creator.
Relationship to the Rest of the Bible and to Christ
We have touched on this subject (cf. Genre and Literary Features) and will expand on this within the fuller scope of the doctrine of the Trinity.
First we must emphasize that Proverbs is poetry, which means that it is allusive and playful, concealing, and sometimes provoking. It has been very popular in modern theology to think of Scripture as narrative, a drama or story. And the idea of story certainly helps us to grasp the doctrine of providence, that God is moving the creation along from Israel to the NT church to its final perfection in Christ. Stories also allow us to fit otherwise-unrelated things into a whole.
But not everything can be reduced to stories, especially when we are thinking about ethics. Proverbs, which wants us to think about ethics in this world, is full of symbols, characters, parables, and virtues. William Brown helpfully remarks here, “More than simply ‘shorthand reminders’ or summaries of stories, moral principles, rules, maxims, proverbs, and propositional insights can function decisively in the formation of character, indeed, in the formation of moral narratives.”23
In other words Proverbs points to Christ beyond merely the story of redemption. Proverbs’ sayings are like praises of the divine word that ordered the creation. The sayings also anticipate Jesus’ wisely spoken words. His parables and the Sermon on the Mount, after all, are often not narratives of redemption but symbolic, emotive, and poetic ways of living faithfully into this narrative. It should not be overlooked that, as Jesus comes to the end of his great sermon, he turns to thoughts of wisdom: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
Nevertheless, the real Christological fruit of the book comes in thinking of wisdom alongside the ancient creedal understanding of God the Trinity.
Eternally Begotten: Jesus as Logos and Wisdom
Paul calls Jesus the “wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). The theology behind this statement is more complex than we might imagine. But expending a little mental energy goes a long way toward opening up God’s triune identity and what he has done to reveal himself and to redeem his creation by wisdom.
We start with the idea that Jesus is wisdom just as he is also the eternally begotten Son of the Father: he is both wisdom and Son. The church fathers behind the early Christian creeds relied on Proverbs 8:22–25 to understand this dual aspect of Jesus’ identity, believing Jesus to be the reality behind Woman Wisdom: he is eternally with God but is also the Word and Master Artisan, who participates in the creation of the world (Heb. 1:1–3). We will say more about his creating below. The point to take away here is that Jesus is the wisdom of God that preceded creation and the wisdom through whom God brought creation into being (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1–4).
It is next important to acknowledge that Father, Son, and Spirit all have the same wisdom; after all, they are one nature with one set of attributes, not three (one will, one being, one love, one aseity). Yet it is also true that the Son is the expression of wisdom on behalf of the Trinity. He is our wisdom from God from all eternity.
We also know that God’s work of creation and salvation happened in time but were also in God’s designs from eternity, before all time (Rom. 8:28–29; Eph. 1:4; 2:10). Or we could say that it was always in God’s mind to share himself with his creation—to show his glory and to issue the call to get wisdom and insight (Prov. 8:1–4; 2 Cor. 4:6). In this way wisdom is the communicative attribute at the heart of God’s being. God has, to be clear, an eternal desire to communicate himself to the world through the Son. As the NT has it, Jesus is light, logos, glory, and the wisdom of God for the world that would come in the age of time.
Wisdom in Creation and Incarnation
Time began in God’s creation of this world—he made time, technically speaking, starting what we know as history, present, and future. In theological terms, we say Jesus is begotten whereas the world is made; Jesus is eternally divine before all time whereas the world is not. We are different beings with separate natures from God.
Scripture tells us that God made the world “by wisdom” (Ps. 104:24; Prov. 3:19). Here again we see the second person of the Trinity acting communicatively in the design and arrangement of the world (Prov. 8:30). From its start the creation shares, reveals, and calls. The Son is the Word through whom this revelation goes out.
In time Jesus as Son and wisdom is sent into the created world to become God incarnate: a time-bound part of God’s own creation and a new voice of wisdom heard preeminently in the power of the cross (John 1:1–18; 1 Cor. 1:18). As the Son of God and fully human at the same time, Jesus alone is able to make us his coheirs and to be adopted as children of God into eternal divine love (1 John 3:1).24
Raised, Ascended, Returning
As noted above, the authors of the NT and the early church grounded these doctrines of Jesus’ eternal begetting and his incarnation in time in Proverbs 8.25 This is addressed in greater detail in the Response section on Proverbs 8:1–36, but we pause here to point out one parallel between the book and Revelation (cf. table 2.2).
TABLE 2.2: Parallel between Proverbs 8:30–31 and Revelation 3:14
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Proverbs 8:30–31 |
Revelation 3:14 |
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Then I was beside him, like a master workman (Hb. ʾamon), and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. |
And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.” |
Note the way John seems to transliterate the Hebrew ʾamon (“master workman”) of Proverbs as “Amen” to signify Jesus as the beginning of God’s creation and the ascended Lord who speaks to the seven churches. John points to the glory of Jesus’ wisdom in his ascension and final coming. Here is how Paul frames his own peek into the cascading events that await us:
In [the Son] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:19–20)
All things were made through the Son, and all things will be brought to their full perfection through him. Otherwise stated, whereas Jesus’ death and resurrection sealed his victory over sin and death, his ascension and return promise its completion. What Paul calls reconciliation and peace point to a cosmic event that will transform all reality. Douglas Farrow describes this transformation: “This act is an act of fundamental reordering that impinges upon all creaturely reality, hence equally upon the living and the dead. It is an act of centering all things on Christ and committing them to the fiery yet fecund consequences of that centering.”26
In the NT age we heed wisdom’s call not simply in creation (Prov. 8:1–4) but from the Wisdom raised from death, reigning, and poised to return again. That return and what it will accomplish are our guides for living wisely between the times until he comes again. We must live according to the peace he will establish yet remain free from the kind of heroism that tries to do the restorative work that only Christ can accomplish. He will come again in glory.
Preaching from Proverbs
With its 915 sayings Proverbs has no limit to the kinds of preaching it offers. Having preached form the book and helped other pastors while they created extended sermon series, I propose two general approaches, which can be used together.
First, Proverbs can be preached in a series of five to ten sermons taken from an outline like the one that follows. Further guidance can be found at various points in the comments on verses indicated in parentheses.
(1) What is wisdom? This sets up wisdom as the act of navigating life within creation by tradition and the fear of the Lord (1:1–7).
(2) The fear of the Lord. This motto is repeated fourteen times in Proverbs at crucial points in its structure (1:7).
(3) Wisdom as way and path and the “liminal” nature of Proverbs (1:8–33).
(4) Wisdom and women. Over half of the sayings in chapters 1–9 deal with women: wives and mistresses and Woman Wisdom and Dame Folly (1:20–33; 5:1–9:18).
(5) Wisdom and creation. Wisdom is our way of navigating life according to God’s designs for the world (cf. discussion of house-building; 3:19–20; 9:1–18; 24:3–4).
(6) The simplicity of wisdom (30:1–9).
(7) The wonder of wisdom (30:15–33).
(8) Valiant men and women of wisdom (31:10–31).
(9) Wisdom in the mundane. It is important to consider a few of the hundreds of individual sayings and clusters in chapters 10–29. Hints for preaching these sections are shared below.
Second, proverbs can be taught one at a time or in small clusters. Granted limited space, the commentary in the following chapters still attempts to open up most of these sayings into something that could be taught or preached at length. For instance, here are a few proverbs that would work well for this approach:
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox. (14:4)
What brightens the eyes, gladdens the heart,
and good news puts sap in the bones. (15:30)27
The glory of young men is their strength,
but the splendor of old men is their gray hair. (20:29)
The first saying speaks on many levels, such as the rewards of hard work, the inevitability of toil, and the repetitive nature of labor (14:23; cf. Gen. 3:17–19). The second saying leads us to reflect on the immense variety of things that strengthen our resolve and renew hope. And the third alerts us to a theology of mortality—youthfulness, aging, and death (Prov. 16:31; cf. Ps. 37:25).
Many larger clusters also invite pastoral study and preaching: sloth (Prov. 6:6–7; 24:30–34); abominations (6:16–19); the link between God, king, and subject (16:1–15);28 desire (23:1–8); addiction (23:29–35); and fools and fittingness (26:1–12), to name just a few.
Interpretive Challenges
Theological
Among other things, Proverbs is about wise work, diligent work, and ethical work. Work! Those views of the gospel we might call thinner are often reticent to preach human action in the world for fear of commending works-righteousness. Such a mood quickly runs afoul of Jesus’ own teachings on work—the Sermon on the Mount above all—as well as the clear message in the NT letters to walk in “works” prepared for us by God (e.g., Eph. 2:10; Col. 1:10; 2 Thess. 1:11; 2:17; Titus 2:14). We are not saved by works, but our faith and hope are active virtues, inspiring the love of overflowing good works (Col. 1:3–5; James 2:14). This explains the stress above on how the Son of God as wisdom holds the unmerited offer of salvation together with the creation and renewal of the entire cosmos. When reading and teaching from Proverbs, one ought always to remember that the gospel is not just a moral and individual matter but one active in cosmic and social dimensions as well.
Literary
The section on Genre and Literary Features presented some of the recent interpretive challenges that arise from thinking too narrowly about wisdom and wisdom literature. When received openly as one of Israel’s poetic writings, Proverbs echoes Israel’s legal, ritual, historical, and prophetic traditions. We need not lose the significant connections between the so-called wisdom books and those other traditions; the aim is to enrich such connections.
Linguistic
Finally, Proverbs presents a definite challenge in the way it has been translated into English—usually more as an explanation of the poetry than a reproduction of the terse and clever Hebrew original. Robert Alter’s translation is invaluable on this point, as is Jonathan Kline’s A Proverb a Day in Biblical Hebrew.29
Outline
The book comprises three major sections (chs. 1–9; 10–29; 30–31), which can be further divided by the book’s seven introductory headings (1:1; 10:1; 22:17; and following).
I. Sayings and Instructions (1:1–9:18)
A. Title and Introduction (1:1–7)
B. First Instruction (1:8–19)
C. First Interlude: Woman Wisdom’s First Warning (1:20–33)
D. Second Instruction (2:1–22)
E. Third Instruction (3:1–12)
F. Second Interlude: Wisdom and Creation (3:13–20)
G. Fourth Instruction (3:21–35)
H. Fifth Instruction: The Tradition of Wisdom; Get It, Love It, Hold It (4:1–9)
I. Sixth Instruction (4:10–27)
J. Seventh Instruction (5:1–23)
K. Third Interlude: Virtues and Vices (6:1–19)
L. Eighth Instruction (6:20–35)
M. Ninth Instruction (7:1–27)
N. Fourth Interlude: Wisdom on the Heights (8:1–36)
O. Fifth Interlude: Women, Ways, and Houses (9:1–18)
II. The First Solomonic Collection (10:1–22:16)
A. Solomon’s Intro to Wisdom: Contrasts of the Wise-Righteous and Wicked-Fools (10:1–15:33)
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)
VI. Agur Son of Jakeh (30:1–33)
VII. King Lemuel and the Valiant Woman (31:1–31)
Proverbs 1:1–7