1. Please note that in general, when the authors discuss words in the original biblical languages, the series uses a general rather than a scholarly method of transliteration.
1. Alyce McKenzie imagines what such a day would be like in Preaching Proverbs: Wisdom for the Pulpit (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), xi–xii.
2. Some believe the two should be kept separate; see P. F. Craffert, “Relationships Between Social-Scientific, Literary, and Rhetorical Interpretations of Texts,” BTB 26 (Spring 1996): 45–55.
3. O. H. Steck, Old Testament Exegesis: A Guide to the Methodology (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1995), 3–16.
4. R. P. Knierim, “On the Task of Old Testament Theology,” in A Biblical Itinerary: In Search of Method, Form and Content: Essays in Honor of George W. Coats, ed. E. E. Carpenter (JSOTSup 240; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 151–66.
5. A. Taylor, The Proverb (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1931), 3.
6. W. Mieder, Proverbs Are Never Out of Season: Popular Wisdom in the Modern Age (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 18–40.
7. L. and R. Flavell, Dictionary of Proverbs and Their Origins (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993), 2.
8. K. Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), 2–3. Burke first published this essay in 1941.
9. T. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 59.
10. K. Snodgrass, “Parables and the Hebrew Scriptures,” in To Hear and Obey: Essays in Honor of Fredrick Carlson Holmgren, ed. B. Bergfalk and P. E. Koptak (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1997), 164–77.
11. S. Niditch, Folklore and the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993), 67–87.
12. A detailed list of wisdom forms can be found in D. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (NAC 14; Nashville: Broadman, 1993), 29–38.
13. O. Moll, Sprichwörterbibliographie (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1958), noted in W. Mieder, International Proverb Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography, 2 vols. (New York and London: Garland, 1982, 1990). See also W. Mieder and A. Dundes, The Wisdom of Many: Essays on the Proverb (New York and London: Garland, 1981).
14. P. W. Skehan, “Wisdom’s House,” in Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom (Washington, D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1971), 27–45, proposes a similar three-part structure.
15. D. A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis-Malachi (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 187, proposes a five-part structure.
a Two-part introduction (1:1–7; 1:8–9:18)
b Solomon’s proverbs-first collection (10:1–22:16)
c Words of the wise (22:17–24:34)
b′ Solomon’s proverbs-second collection (25:1–29:27)
a′ Two-part conclusion (30:1–33; 31:1–31)
16. J. R. Wilson, “Biblical Wisdom, Spiritual Formation, and the Virtues,” in The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke, ed. J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 297–307.
17. R. Meynet, Rhetorical Analysis: An Introduction to Biblical Rhetoric (JSOTSup 256; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 172–77.
18. K. Egan, Teaching As Story Telling: An Alternative Approach to Teaching and the Curriculum (London: Routledge, 1988). Egan shows how good teachers use binary oppositions to make content clear and compelling.
19. On “modes of thought,” see N. Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (San Diego and New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982), 54; on “perspective,” see K. Burke, “The Four Master Tropes,” in A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1945), 503–5.
20. W. W. Hallo, ed., The Context of Scripture (Leiden: Brill, 1997), xxvi.
21. W. McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach (London: SCM, 1970), 51–208. Thirty years after its publication, this introduction to “International Wisdom” is still essential reading. For a challenge to McKane’s theory, see S. Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 53–73, who argues that sufficient evidence is lacking.
22. “The Instructions of Shuruppak,” ANET, 594–95 and BWL, 92–95.
23. B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World’s Earliest Proverb Collections, 2 vols. (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1997). Proverbs appear as early as 2600 B.C. and are often found on tablets used to teach writing to scribes.
24. W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 1.
25. “Ahiqar: A New Translation and Introduction,” trans. J. Lindenberger, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 2:498; ANET, 428 (cf. Prov. 23:13–14).
26. “The Instruction of Ptahhotep,” AEL, 1:63; ANET, 412.
27. “Inscription of Nefer-Seshem-Re Called Shesi,” AEL, 1:17.
28. R. Murphy provides a balanced assessment of the question in Proverbs, 290–94, and The Tree of Life, 23–25. See also J. H. Walton, “Cases of Alleged Borrowing,” in Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 192–97; and N. Whybray’s review of research in The Book of Proverbs: A Survey of Modern Study (HBIS 1; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 6–14, 78–84.
29. See J. Ruffle, “The Teaching of Amenemope and Its Connection with the Book of Proverbs,” TynBul 28 (1977): 29–68; reprinted in R. B. Zuck, Learning from the Sages: Selected Studies on the Book of Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 293–331.
30. N. Shupak, “The ‘Sitz-im-Leben’ of the Book of Proverbs in the Light of a Comparison of Biblical and Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” RB 94:1 (1987): 98–119, and Where Can Wisdom be Found? (OBO 130; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 339. Similarities include the heated and cool-tempered persons (cf. Prov. 19:19), weighing of hearts (24:12), and chambers of the belly (“inmost being,” 20:30).
31. J. Crenshaw, “Education in Ancient Israel,” JBL 104 (1985): 601–15; and “The Contemplative Life,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. Sasson (New York: Scribners, 1995); both reprinted in Urgent Advice and Probing Questions: Collected Writings on Old Testament Wisdom (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1995). See also F. W. Golka, “The Israelite Wisdom School or ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ ” in The Leopard’s Spots: Biblical and African Wisdom in Proverbs (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), 4–15.
32. J. L. Crenshaw, “The Perils of Specializing in Wisdom: What I Have Learned from Thirty Years of Teaching,” in Urgent Advice, 594, and Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence (New York: Doubleday, 1998).
33. B. K. Waltke, “The Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature,” BibSac 139 (1979): 221–38; reprinted in Learning from the Sages: Selected Studies on the Book of Proverbs, ed. R. B. Zuck (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 49–65.
34. J. D. Martin, Proverbs (OTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 18–31; D. W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 138–57.
35. B. S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament As Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 553. Childs believes that the ascriptions to Agur and Lemuel indicate that the first verse credits Solomon with a general responsibility for the whole book, 548.
36. C. V. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs (BLS 11; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1985).
37. Against the view of M. V. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 6, 48–49. However, Fox’s skepticism about various attempts to date Prov. 1–9 in the mid-fifth century b.c. rightly argues that correspondences between text and context do not rule out other social-historical contexts. So, for example, Fox suggests that personified Wisdom may be a response to Greek philosophy, but he adds that while this and other characteristics “allow for a Hellenistic dating, they do not prove it.”
38. W. G. Plaut, The Book of Proverbs: A Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1961), 10.
39. R. E. Clements has suggested that “for the most part the proverbs and admonitions of the wise men of ancient Israel have little to gain or lose by being ascribed to Solomon. They are intended to be true and memorable in themselves, rather than on account of their notable authorship” (“Solomon and the Origins of Wisdom in Israel,” in Perspectives on the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honor of Walter J. Harrelson, ed. James L. Crenshaw [Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1988], 25).
40. D. Patrick and A. Scult, Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 12, define rhetoric as “the means by which a text establishes and manages its relationship to its audience in order to achieve a particular effect.”
41. S. Fowl, “The Ethics of Interpretation; or, What’s Left Over After the Elimination of Meaning,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, ed. D. J. A. Clines, S. E. Fowl, and S. E. Porter (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 379–98.
42. For more detailed descriptions of this approach, see P. E. Koptak, “Reading Scripture with Kenneth Burke: Genesis 38,” in To Hear and Obey: Essays in Honor of Fredrick Carlson Holmgren, ed. B. J. Bergfalk and P. E. Koptak (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1997): 84–94, and “Rhetorical Identification in Preaching,” Preaching 14 (November/December 1998): 11–18.
43. J. B. White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984), 14–20. For White, language in general and reading in particular have three functions: to establish a relationship between writer and reader, to form individual character, and to constitute and reconstitute culture.
44. A. Ogden Bellis, “The Gender and Motives of the Wisdom Teacher in Proverbs 7,” in Wisdom and Psalms: The Feminist Companion to the Bible, Second Series, ed. A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 90–91.
45. E. Dyck, “Canon As Context for Interpretation,” in The Act of Bible Reading: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Biblical Interpretation, ed. E. Dyck (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 33–64. See also D. F. Morgan, Between Text and Community: The “Writings” in Canonical Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).
46. See M. Garsiel, The First Book of Samuel: A Literary Study of the Comparative Structures, Analogies and Parallels (Ramat-Gan: Revivim, 1985). On inner-biblical interpretation, see M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985).
47. C. J. Scalise, From Scripture to Theology: A Canonical Journey into Hermeneutics (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996). Scalise argues that interpreters must explain how each biblical text functions as authority for the Christian church. See also Scalise, Hermeneutics As Theological Prolegomena: A Canonical Approach (Macon: Mercer Univ. Press, 1994).
48. See R. Schultz, “Integrating Old Testament Theology and Exegesis: Literary, Thematic and Canonical Issues,” in NIDOTTE, 185–205.
49. J. Sanders, “Hermeneutics,” in IDBSup (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 402–7.
50. On this topic, see L. Boström, The God of the Sages: The Portrayal of God in the Book of Proverbs (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1990).
51. R. E. Clements, “Israel in Its Historical and Cultural Setting,” in The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives, ed. R. E. Clements (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 7–10. See also L. Purdue, J. Blenkinsopp, J. J. Collins, C. Meyers, Families in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 225–49.
52. E. M. Curtis, “Old Testament Wisdom: A Model for Faith-Learning Integration,” Christian Scholar’s Review 15/3 (1986): 213–27.
53. Emerging Judaism identified wisdom with torah, as seen in Sir. 24:23 and in 19:20, “All wisdom is fear of the Lord and in all wisdom is the fulfillment of the Law.” See R. Murphy, The Tree of Life, 78–79.
54. In the Hebrew canon, the major division after “The Torah” is called “The Prophets.” It includes the historical books Joshua through 2 Kings and the prophetic books Isaiah through Malachi (except for Ruth, Lamentations, and Daniel, which are found in the third major division, “The Writings”).
55. G. Wilson describes the relationship between wisdom and traditional teachings of covenant and law as “holy tension . . . a tension through which they provide needed ‘words of wisdom’ ” (“Wisdom,” NIDOTTE, 4:1277).
56. W. A. Beardslee, “Uses of the Proverb in the Synoptic Gospels,” Int 24 (1970): 61–73; reprinted in Mieder and Dundes, The Wisdom of Many. See also A. P. Winton, The Proverbs of Jesus: Issues of History and Rhetoric (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990).
57. B. Witherington III, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1994). See also F. W. Burnett, “Wisdom,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. J. B. Green and S. McKnight (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 873–77.
58. Witherington, Jesus the Sage, 370, n. 102, reminds us that John chose the term logos (word) and not Sophia (wisdom). For a discussion of Paul’s use of Sophia, see J. S. Lamp, First Corinthians 1–4 in Light of Jewish Wisdom Traditions: Christ, Wisdom and Spirituality (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 2000), 117–88.
59. Also, the language for describing wisdom in the apocryphal Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon provides a variety of words and images that are transferred to Jesus. The question is explored in greater detail in the comments for chs. 1, 3, and 8, where Woman Wisdom appears.
60. For help in preaching from the book of Proverbs, see E. Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1989); and D. Gowan, Reclaiming the Old Testament for the Christian Pulpit (Atlanta: John Knox, 1980), for chapters on wisdom literature. T. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible, and A. M. McKenzie, Preaching Proverbs, have chapters dedicated to the book of Proverbs.
61. F. C. Holmgren, “Barking Dogs Never Bite, Except Now and Then: Proverbs and Job,” AThR 61 (1979): 341–53.
62. D. Atkinson, Pastoral Ethics (Oxford: Lynx Communications, 1994), 12–13.
63. D. Gill lists faithfulness as the first of the virtues in Being Good: Building Moral Character (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 103–13.
64. Kidner, Proverbs, 59.
65. Hubbard, Proverbs, 48.
66. After S. Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
67. See W. P. Brown, Character in Crisis: A Fresh Approach to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
68. Throughout the commentary, use of “Yahweh” signifies the tetragrammaton YHWH (NIV, “LORD”).
1. See the introduction on these topics.
2. AEL, 1:63; ANET, 413 (sec. 40).
3. W. P. Brown, Character in Crisis, 23–30, sees a chiastic or mirror pattern that distinguishes: comprehensive intellectual virtues (1:2a and 7), literary expressions of wisdom (1:2b and 6), instrumental virtues (1:3a and 4–5), and, at the center position of greatest importance, moral and communal virtues (1:3b).
4. Kidner, Proverbs, 36.
5. See the section “Wisdom in the Old Testament” in the introduction.
6. Scott, Proverbs, 36.
7. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 36, understands śekel as insight, “the ability to grasp the meanings or implications of a situation or message,” combining understanding and expertise.
8. Brown, Character in Crisis, 42. See also footnote 3. Brown sees a chiastic structure in verses 2–7 with these three terms at the center focus.
9. Whybray, Proverbs, 32.
10. Scott, Proverbs, 33.
11. McKane, Proverbs, 265, noting that both terms “border on the pejorative,” takes this as an indication that early wisdom teaching was secular and pragmatic to a fault. But there is no reason to look to a hypothetical history of the text to explain the jarring use of terminology here.
12. Scott L. Harris, Proverbs 1–9: A Study of Inner-Biblical Interpretation (SBLDS 150; Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1995), 191–93.
,” 14. McKane, Proverbs, 266.
15. Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 66–69.
16. J. Day, “Foreign Semitic Influence on the Wisdom of Israel and Its Appropriation in the Book of Proverbs,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton, ed. J. Day, R. P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 67. Fear of the deity, while not central to Babylonian wisdom literature, can be found in the “Counsels of Wisdom” and the “Babylonian Theodicy.”
17. See the section “Fear of Yahweh” in the introduction.
18. For this idea of a distinct readership, see C. Seitz, World Without End: The Old Testament As Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), chs. 7, 10.
19. Kurt Rudolph, “Wisdom,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: MacMillan, 1987), 15:393–401.
20. B. A. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995). Some rhetoricians were known as “sophists” or “teachers of wisdom,” G. A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1980), 25–40.
21. R. J. Clifford speaks of three dimensions in wisdom: sapiential (a way of seeing reality), ethical (a way of conducting oneself), and religious (a way of relation to the order of God); see The Wisdom Literature (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 50, after L. Alonso-Schoekel, Proverbios (Madrid: Ediciones Christiandad, 1984).
22. Stanley Hauerwas, Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth Century Theology and Philosophy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), 171. “Good writers therefore try to force those of us who read them to attend to what we read, for in so doing, they demand of us the formation of new habits, which thereby changes our lives,” 172.
23. For help in preaching from the book of Proverbs, E. Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament, and D. Gowan, Reclaiming the Old Testament for the Christian Pulpit, have chapters on preaching from the wisdom literature. T. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible, and A. M. McKenzie, Preaching Proverbs, have chapters dedicated to the book of Proverbs.
24. R. Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church As Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996), offers some suggestions.
25. D. J. Estes, Hear My Son: Teaching and Learning in Proverbs 1–9 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 14.
26. Ashely Woodwiss supports this point while arguing for another: “While the term catechesis may be off-putting to some Protestants (and invoke painful memories for some Catholics!) it points to the substantive differences that ought to exist between Christian educational practice and secularized public education. Education is always character formation. The question is, what kind of character and for what?” “What Is the Church Good For?” Books and Culture 3/6 (1997): 39.
27. J. R. Wilson, Gospel Virtues: Practicing Faith, Hope, and Love in Uncertain Times (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 72–88. Four features of faith apply to education in the book of Proverbs: It is all encompassing and does not fall into secularism, it is communal, it is a gift, and it makes personal demands.
28. M. G. Witten, All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993).
29. W. R. Baker, Sticks and Stones: The Discipleship of Our Speech (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996). Baker expounds the biblical teaching of speech ethics with frequent reference to ancient Near Eastern wisdom, Greek philosophy and rhetoric, and the rabbinic tradition.
30. Cited in D. Beckmann and A. Simon, Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God’s World (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 4. The authors, leaders in Bread for the World, a Christian citizen’s movement, recommend political action to accompany the work of feeding hungry people. Changing national policies, they argue, will bring about long-term results.
1. See the introduction for a discussion of how young women can appropriate teaching that is not addressed to them. Although everyone faces this problem as readers of an ancient text, it is especially acute for female readers.
2. T. A. Hildebrandt, “Proverb,” in Cracking Old Testament Codes: A Guide to Interpreting the Literary Genres of the Old Testament, ed. D. B. Sandy and R. L. Giese Jr. (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1995), 240. R. Murphy, Wisdom Literature, 55, finds similarities to the casuistic, “If you are . . .” in Ptahhotep, but there are no indications of the court context of Ptahhotep here.
3. Hubbard, Proverbs, 51.
4. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 38.
5. Kidner, Proverbs, 60.
6. Note that outcomes are also compared. The “my son” of 1:8 and 15 are both followed by motive clauses marked by “for” (ki). T. Boys, Tacita Sacra (London: T. Hamilton, 1824), quoted in R. Meynet, Rhetorical Analysis: An Introduction to Biblical Rhetoric (Sheffield: Academic Press, 1998), 97.
7. Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 116.
8. O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms, trans. T. J. Hallett (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 92.
9. Clifford, The Wisdom Literature, 58, translates both occurrences with “senselessly.”
10. While the translation is not Garrett’s, the insight is his; Proverbs, 70.
11. M. L. Taylor, “Local Perspective: The Principal of Albany Park Multicultural Academy Speaks Out on Gangs,” Hands-On 9/4 (1999): 4.
12. See also Mic. 7:2, “All men lie in wait to shed blood; each hunts his brother with a net.”
13. Many commentators view this as a gloss, a quote inserted from Isa. 59:7 to explain the enigmatic proverb in Prov. 1:17. R. J. Clifford, “The Text and Versions of Proverbs,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister (CBQMS 29; Washington, D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 48. The reference to Isaiah does seem intentional, but for a different purpose as explained above.
14. Harris, Proverbs 1–9, 43, 52–61.
15. Ibid., 52–65. Harris argues that the citations are intentional, reinforcing the parent’s instructions with teaching from the Torah and Prophets.
16. B. Anderson, “Musings: Being Taught While Serving,” Hands-On 9/4 (1999): 21, 30.
17. J. B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
18. J. B. Schor, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer (New York: Basic Books, 1998).
19. Schor’s book is reviewed, along with Robert Frank’s Luxury Fever, in “No Satisfaction: The Trials of the Shopping Nation,” The New Yorker 74/43 (Jan. 25, 1999): 88–92.
20. Some help in understanding the problem can be found in R. Clapp, ed., The Consuming Passion: Christianity and the Consumer Culture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998). Clapp observes that the “consumptive ethos is exceedingly complex,” 12.
1. Murphy, Wisdom Literature, 55.
2. See the survey of views in C. V. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1985), 23–46; and J. Day, “Foreign Semitic Influence on the Wisdom of Israel and its Appropriation in the Book of Proverbs,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton, ed. J. Day, R. P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 68–70.
3. See the Akkadian Oracles and Prophecies spoken by women and goddesses, ANET, 449–51. Unlike Wisdom, these goddesses direct worship to themselves: “I am Ishtar of Arbela. . . . When you were small, I sustained you. Fear not, praise me!”
4. R. Murphy, The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 133–34.
5. Hubbard, Proverbs, 55, rightly observes that this address is the negative antithesis of the speech in ch. 8.
6. See also Ex. 10:3; 1 Sam. 1:14; 2 Sam. 2:26; Hos. 6:5.
7. Harris, Proverbs 1–9, 93–95. In the early days of this country, women speakers such as Harriet Livermore, who preached before Congress, claimed that like the prophets, they received their authority to speak from God. See M. W. Casey, “The First Female Public Speakers in America (1630–1840): Searching for Egalitarian Christian Primitivism,” JCR 23/1 (March 2000): 1–28.
8. “Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you. . . .”
9. R. Murphy translates the first phrase as yet another rejection of Wisdom, “turn from my reproof,” but this move toward consistency is unnecessary (“Wisdom’s Song: Proverbs 1:20–23,” CBQ 48 [1986]: 456–60).
10. P. Trible, “Wisdom Builds a Poem: The Architecture of Proverbs 1:20–33,” JBL 94 (1975): 509–18. D. Garrett, Proverbs, 71, and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 101–4, propose different arrangements.
11. Garrett, Proverbs, 71.
12. Abstracts of quality often take feminine plural (B. K. Waltke and M. O’ Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 121, sec. 7.4.2).
13. Trible reviews scholarly opinion and derives four roles: preacher of repentance, prophet, teacher, and counselor, “Wisdom Builds a Poem,” 509.
14. See McKane, Proverbs, 274–76.
15. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 99, understands the verb as only a call to attention, but the larger context supports a sense of turning to repent or “respond.”
16. B. Waltke, “Lady Wisdom as Mediatrix: An Exposition of Proverbs 1:20–33,” Presbyterion: Covenant Seminary Review 14 (Spring 1988): 1–15. Waltke understands her role as that of a mediator who speaks to humans with the authority of divine revelation.
17. Rosemary Reuther expressed surprise that the idea of prayer to Sophia or Divine Wisdom would provoke criticism, since she understands it as one of the many biblical images for God (“Divine Wisdom and Christian Fear: The Controversy over Female God-Images in the Churches Today,” 30 Good Minutes: The Chicago Sunday Evening Club, broadcast January 1, 1995).
18. A. Campolo, “The Faith Equation,” in Ten Great Preachers: Messages and Interviews, ed. B. Turpie (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 29–31.
19. I argued this point in “Preaching Lawfully,” Ex Auditu 11 (1995): 145–52.
20. “School Gives Teens Another Chance,” Chicago Tribune, Friday, Aug. 23, 1998.
1. AEL, 2:149; see also ANET, 421–22.
2. McKane, Proverbs, 278–81, claims that strictly speaking, the typical components of ancient Near Eastern instructions (imperatives, motives, and conclusions: “Do this . . . for . . . so that . . .”) are not in this text. However, if one takes the whole chapter as a literary unit, all three can be found: imperative (“turn your ear to wisdom,” 2:1–4), motive (“he guards the course of the just,” 2:8–19), and conclusion (“thus you will walk in the ways of good men,” 2:20–22).
3. See D. N. Freedman, “Acrostic Poems in the Hebrew Bible: Alphabetic and Otherwise,” CBQ 48 (1986): 408–31; “Acrostics and Metrics in Hebrew Poetry,” HTR 65 (1972): 367–92, for examples in Lam. 5, Ps. 33 and 94, and Proverbs.
4. D. N. Freedman, “Proverbs 2 and 31: A Study in Structural Complementarity,” in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed. M. Cogan, B. L. Eichler, and J. H. Tigay (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 47–55. Both acrostics, having nearly identical counts of syllables, serve as a set of bookends, a structure echoed in Sirach.
5. After Scott, Proverbs, 43–43.
6. Murphy, Proverbs, 14, after P. Skehan, “The Seven Columns of Wisdom’s House in Proverbs 1–9,” in Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom (CBQMS 1; Washington, D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1971), 9.
7. Garrett, Proverbs, 75, argues that the section on God emphasizes understanding God and his ways, the second on wisdom emphasizes “proper and careful behavior in life.”
8. See the connection between mining and wisdom in Job 28.
9. M. V. Fox, “The Pedagogy of Proverbs 2,” JBL 113 (1994): 237. Fox argues that “incline the heart” denotes more than paying attention but actually desiring and choosing, as in Judg. 9:3; 1 Kings 11:3; and Ps. 119:36, encompassing both attention and the action that results.
10. “The Teaching of Duaf’s son Khety,” in R. B. Parkinson, Voices from Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 75–76.
11. Fear and knowledge are “the two classic Old Testament terms for true religion—the twin poles of awe and intimacy” (Kidner, Proverbs, 61).
12. Clifford, Proverbs, 44, has “resourcefulness” in agreement with M. V. Fox, “Words for Wisdom,” ZAH 6 (1993): 149–69, who stresses the attribute or “ability to devise plans and stratagems of a sort that give one power, particularly in conflicts,” over the outcome it brings.
13. A. Ross, “Proverbs,” 912, says that “the term includes the ideas of both sound wisdom and its effect: viz., abiding success, i.e., achievement and deliverance.”
14. C. C. Maier, “Conflicting Attractions: Parental Wisdom and the ‘Strange Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” in Wisdom and Psalms: A Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series), ed. A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 104. Maier suggests that the symbol of the wicked men possibly reflects a historical group of “upper-class males who gain their riches not through inherited wealth but by taking part in international trade and usury.” Such a view allegorizes the violence and thievery, ignores the evidence for symbolism of prophetic concerns for covenant faithfulness, and overlooks the possibility that an upper class male can be led astray by petty thieving and womanizing. The biblical image of violent men is applicable to a wide range of situations without an appeal to historical speculation. Shakespeare’s Falstaff and the wild Prince Hal from Henry IV are examples of wild living done for its own sake.
15. See Mal. 2:14; all adultery involves some form of abandonment. Note that “partner of her youth” is restated as “wife of your youth” in Prov. 5:18; the theme of adultery applies to men and women alike.
16. See also Gen. 40:23 and Jer. 2:32 for forgetting in general. Other texts use the word for forgetting God (Deut. 8:14; Jer. 3:21) and God’s law (Hos. 4:6). Jer. 13:21–25 associates forgetting with adultery (13:27).
17. Warnings against adultery as a form of faithlessness against one’s neighbor are common in ancient wisdom literature, esp. in Egypt. “The Instruction of Ptahhotep” reads, “Beware of approaching the women! . . . A thousand men are turned away from their good; a short moment like a dream, then death comes for having known them” (AEL, 1:68).
18. J. Blenkinsopp, “The Social Context of the ‘Outsider Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” Bib 72 (1991): 457–73. C. C. Maier, Die “Fremde Frau” in Proverbien 1–9 (OBO 144; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 99, argues that the mention of “covenant” names her as a member of Israelite society who has departed from its norms. Her loyalties are “other,” but her origin is not.
19. There is a good case that the terms make reference to the woman’s relation to another man. Whybray, Proverbs, 55, argues that the Bible uses zarah for persons outside the family or tribe, or even for a person other than oneself (Job 19:27; Prov. 14:10; 27:2). Therefore, the “other woman” could be “the wife of another man” and nokriyah a reference to another family (see Gen. 31:15).
20. Righteousness becomes the source or capstone for all other virtues, originating in the God who is “righteous in all his ways” (Ps. 145:17) and who “is our righteousness” (Jer. 33:16). Persons created in the image of God are to bear witness to this righteousness in their lives (Isa. 42:6). M. Ish-Horowicz, “Righteousness (ṣedek) in the Bible and Its Rabbinic Interpretations,” in The Interpretation of the Bible: The International Symposium in Slovenia, ed. J. Krašovec (JSOTSup 289; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 577–87.
21. Maier, Fremde Frau, 100–101.
22. If 1:7 marks the beginning of wisdom, 2:5 notes its culmination (see M. V. Fox, “Ideas of Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9,” JBL 116 [1997]: 620).
23. Skehan, “The Seven Columns of Wisdom’s House,” 9–10.
24. F. M. Wilson, “Sacred and Profane? The Yahwistic Redaction of Proverbs Reconsidered,” in The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom and the Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., ed. K. G. Hoglund et al. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 313–34. See also W. G. Jeanrond, “The Significance of Revelation for Biblical Theology,” BibInt 5 (April 1998): 243–57.
25. E. T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), vii. Charry dedicated her book to a young man who is serving a life-sentence in prison for following the way of violent men outlined here; she reports that she speaks with him every week on the phone.
26. W. P. Brown, Character in Crisis: A Fresh Approach to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 40, after C. Newsom, “Women and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. Day (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 156.
27. P. J. Nel, The Structure and Ethos of the Wisdom Admonitions in Proverbs (BZAW 158; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1982), 120–27. “The motivation and starting point of wisdom’s ethos is the recognition of evil,” 126.
28. Many will agree with David Gill: “We are living today in an ethical wilderness” (Being Good: Building Moral Character, 11).
29. Holmgren, “Barking Dogs Never Bite, Except Now and Then: Proverbs and Job,” 341–53.
30. Fox, “Pedagogy,” 241–43. Fox makes reference to medieval rabbinic commentators who thought that spiritual enlightenment must be awaited patiently.
31. Estes, Hear My Son: Teaching and Learning in Proverbs 1–9, 135–49.
32. M. Talbot, “A Mighty Fortress,” in The New York Times Magazine (Feb. 27, 2000).
33. M. Volf, “Floating Along?” in The Gospel and Our Culture 12/1 (March 2000): 1–2, reproduced from the April 5, 2000, issue of the Christian Century, 114.
1. M. V. Fox, “The Pedagogy of Proverbs 2,” 235, and Proverbs 1–9, 141–71, recognizes only two “lectures” (3:1–12, 21–35) with an “interlude” in 3:13–20. Also, McKane, Proverbs, 289; Meinhold, Die Sprüche I, 72–82; Scott, Proverbs, 46. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 47, sees a similar alternation between instruction and hymn at work in Prov. 8–9. P. Overland, “Did the Sage Draw from the Shema?” CBQ 62 (July 2000): 424–40, claims that correspondence with Deut. 6:4–9 establishes the coherence of Prov. 3:1–12.
2. Kidner also divides this way, Proverbs, 63–66.
3. A. Meinhold, “Gott und Mensch in Proverbien III,” VT 37 (1987): 468–77.
4. The heart is most likely the seat of intentions here, but in other contexts, the heart is said to experience distress (Ps. 13:3) and joy (Ps. 4:8; 13:6; 16:9). M. S. Smith, “The Heart and Innards in Israelite Emotional Expressions: Notes from Anthropology and Psychobiology,” JBL 117 (1998): 429. See also Van Leeuwen, “Excursus: The Heart in the Old Testament,” in “Proverbs,” 60–61; the heart is used metaphorically for the “internal wellspring of the acting self.”
5. So also Murphy, Proverbs, 24, speaks against the argument in favor of rewards presented by Whybray, Proverbs, 58–65.
6. S. Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 86–87. The charge to write commands and bind them around the neck plays on the iconic value of writing.
7. Kidner, Proverbs, 64, notes the parallel with Cyrus, Isa. 45:13; cf. 40:3.
8. The LXX translates “and he punishes” in the second line of 3:12. The word mastigoi, “beats,” reads the Heb. kʾb as an imperfect verb instead of a noun (based on its use in Job 5:18), but the emendation to the Heb. required to read that way is unnecessary; the text makes sense as it stands.
9. In disagreement with Kidner, Proverbs, 64, and Scott, Proverbs, 47.
10. The term may refer to red corals, but since they are not as valuable in our day, the translation of “rubies” works well.
11. C. Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1–9 (Neukirchener-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1966), 104–5, claims to have found an Egyptian precursor to this image. A drawing portrays a feminine personification of Maʾat, the Egyptian principle of order, holding a sign of life in her right hand and a scepter signifying rule and honor in the other. However, determination of influence is difficult and precarious; one should look first to the biblical context to determine the meaning of the image and acknowledge that a number of variations on a common image were widespread in the ancient world.
12. O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. T. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 393–405.
13. R. E. Clements, “Wisdom,” in It Is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, ed. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), 68–69, suggests that associations from both traditions may have been in the mind of the wisdom writer.
14. W. Vogels, “ ‘Like One of Us, Knowing tob and raʿ’ (Gen. 3:22),” Semeia 81 (1998): 145–57.
15. R. Marcus, “The Tree of Life in Proverbs,” JBL 62 (1943): 117–20, argues that the phrase in Proverbs carries with it a connotation of health and healing that carried over into Jewish tradition. Modeled after the book of Proverbs, the book of Sirach has Wisdom describing herself as a number of desirable trees with blossoms, “a harvest of honor and wealth” (Sir. 24:17).
16. On the use of the tree and its association with happiness and reward in Ps. 1:3–5, see Y. Gitay, “Psalm 1 and the Rhetoric of Religious Argumentation,” in Literary Structure and Rhetorical Strategies in the Hebrew Bible, ed. L. J. de Regt, J. de Waard, and J. P. Fokkelman (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns), 237–38.
17. “Blessed” in 3:13 and 8:32, 34; “silver and gold” in 3:14 and 8:10; “rubies” in 3:15 and 8:11; “riches” in 3:16 and 8:20–21; “heavens,” “clouds,” and “foundations” in 3:19–20 and 8:27–29. See also the terms for worth in 31:10–12 and “blessed” in 31:28.
18. Fox, “Words for Wisdom,” 159–65.
19. D. Dorsey, The Roads and Highways of Ancient Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991), 30–33. See also idem, “Travel; Transportation,” ISBE, 4:891–97.
20. Kidner, Proverbs, 66.
21. B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer, 1:319 (UET 6/2 322).
22. Hubbard, Proverbs, 77, translates 3:29, “for he dwells with you for safety’s sake,” adding that neighborhood watch signs of today show that we also look to our neighbors for security.
23. Toʿabat is used in Deuteronomy with idols and the gold and silver used to make them (Deut. 7:25), blemished sacrifices (17:1), cross-dressing (22:5), and dishonesty in trade (25:16). Blessings and cursings come in 11:26–28 and 27:14–28:68.
24. Murphy, Proverbs, 23, calls the similarities, “cultic associations.” But R. E. Clements, “Abomination in the Book of Proverbs,” in Texts, Temples and Traditions: A Tribute to Menachem Haran, ed. M. V. Fox et. al. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 211–25, argues that wisdom writers used the phrase for something that is wrong in and of itself. McKane, Proverbs, 301, insists that the common vocabulary is not an indication of interdependence but rather a general antipathy to injustice in the ancient Near East.
25. P. Nel, “
,” NIDOTTE, 4:131.
26. Q. J. Schultze, Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 26.
27. A correlation between Prov. 3:1–10 and Deut. 6 highlights the following echoes: “Bind” and “write” love and faithfulness (3:3; cf. Deut. 6:8–9), “all your heart” (Prov. 3:5; cf. Deut. 6:5), health and nourishment to body and bones (Prov. 3:7–8; cf. Deut. 6:5, “all your soul), “wealth” and “crops” (Prov. 3:9–10; cf. Deut. 6:5, “all your strength” or abundance, Heb. meʿod) (see Overland, “Did the Sage Draw from the Shema?” 427–33). Also the commands “do not forget” (Prov. 3:1; cf. Deut. 6:12) and “fear of the LORD” (Prov. 3:7; cf. Deut. 6:13) share common vocabulary.
28. Deut. 6:4–9: “sit,” “walk on the road [derek],” and “lie down” (cf. Prov. 3:24). Clifford, Proverbs, 52, does not conclude that Proverbs is talking about law, but “that there was a common tradition of exhoratory rhetoric among the scribes of Jerusalem.”
29. See also Vogels, “ ‘Like One of Us,’ ” 145–57. If Vogels is right that holding Adam and Eve back from the tree of life was the first act of salvation, we find another here in Proverbs: God’s correction offering another chance at life as it was meant to be.
30. The point is made very well in the final chapter of B. Hybels, Making Life Work: Putting God’s Wisdom into Action (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 192–206, a series of lessons from the book of Proverbs.
31. On the use of binary opposites in teaching, see K. Egan, Teaching As Storytelling: An Alternative Approach to Teaching and the Curriculum (London: Routledge, 1988), 27–31.
32. See the discussion of 3:11–12 in “Original Meaning” section, esp. the argument for translating “father” rather than “punish.”
33. W. Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (New York: Random House, 1992), xix–xx.
34. Ibid., xxi.
35. O. F. Williams and P. E. Murphy, “The Ethics of Virtue: A Moral Theory for Business,” in A Virtuous Life in Business: Stories of Courage and Integrity in the Corporate World, ed. O. F. Williams and J. W. Houck, (Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield, 1992), 13. The project was inspired by A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2d ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
36. C. S. Calian, “Religious Roots and Business Practices: Vignettes from Life,” in A Virtuous Life in Business, 85.
37. M. L. King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” in Three Centuries of American Rhetorical Discourse: An Anthology and Review, ed. R. F. Reid (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1988), 724. On King’s use of the Bible in his speeches and sermons, see R. Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Word That Moved America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 197–220.
38. C. Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 7–23. The preacher was my seminary teacher, Dr. C. John Weborg.
1. McKane, Proverbs, 302–3; see also N. C. Habel, “The Symbolism of Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9,” Int 26 (April 1972): 131–57.
2. Plaut, Proverbs, 67: “The father speaks as if he were in the place of divine authority, and indeed Jewish tradition compares the parent to God.”
3. G. Baumann, “A Figure with Many Facets: The Literary and Theological Functions of Personified Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9,” in Wisdom and Psalms: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, 2d series, ed. A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 46–52.
4. Whybray, The Book of Proverbs, 22–25.
5. Clifford, Proverbs, 61, proposes an association with 1 Kings 3:7 and Solomon’s claim that he is “only a child.” See also Sir. 51:13–30; Wisd. Sol. 7:1–14, where the young person seeks wisdom directly from the Lord.
6. R. Murphy, “Wisdom and Eros in Proverbs 1–9,” CBQ 50 (1988): 600–603; Proverbs, 27–29.
7. Garrett, Proverbs, 87; Kidner Proverbs, 67; Kidner observes that the phrase calls for the decision to pursue wisdom more than intelligence.
8. D. Grossberg, “Multiple Meaning: Part of a Compound Literary Device in the Hebrew Bible,” East Asia Journal of Theology 4 (1986): 77–86.
9. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 171.
10. On the garland and crown, see also 16:31; Isa. 62:3; Jer. 13:18; Ezek. 16:12. Recall that “the wise inherit honor,” Prov. 3:35.
11. The contrast of light and dark has been called an “archetypal metaphor” because it is readily understood, applicable to a wide range of situations and able to evoke intense emotions. M. Osborne, “Archetypal Metaphor in Rhetoric: the Light-Dark Family,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 53 (1967): 115–26.
12. This description of the two paths does not speak in the imperative voice of the instruction, but that does not mean it is to be separated from it as Whybray, Composition, 13, suggests. Rather, the metaphor of the path links it to the instruction (cf. 3:17) and serves as its climax (see Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 182).
13. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 59, points out that the adulteress does not know her paths are crooked (5:6), the simple young man goes to his death “not knowing” (7:23), and those who go to Folly’s house “do not know” that the dead are there (9:18).
14. Heart can refer to mind (3:3; 6:32; 7:7), emotions (15:3, 15), will (11:20; 14:14), or one’s whole inner being (3:5) (see Kidner, Proverbs, 68).
17. B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World’s Earliest Proverb Collections, 2 vols. (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1997), 1:24.
18. Using another Heb. word for “turn” (swr), the metaphor of right and left was well established (Deut. 5:32; 17:11; 28:14; Josh. 23:6).
19. McKane, Proverbs, 311; Kidner, Proverbs, 68.
20. C. H. Kraft, Communication Theory for Christian Witness, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), 4–10.
21. M. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 105–7.
22. J. E. Loader, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 5. Loader views the question as a cry of the human spirit “to someone or someplace beyond the self.” “The human spirit, for all its creative energy, will wander aimlessly through time without any sense of its true center of gravity unless it is seized by the Spirit of God. Then it may beg on its knees to be transformed and thereby be conformed to what God is doing in the world to make persons human the way Jesus was human” (54–55).
23. J. Crenshaw, “The Missing Voice,” in A Biblical Itinerary: In Search of Method, Form and Content: Essays in Honor of George W. Coats, ed. E. E. Carpenter (JSOTSup 240; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 133–43.
24. J. Westerhoff, Spiritual Life: The Foundation for Preaching and Teaching (Knoxville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 42. Westerhoff believes that the best teachers are those who know how to make a place for the learner to ask questions and search for answers.
25. A. Peetoom, “One Christian’s Defense of Whole Language,” Christian Educators Journal (December 1993): 23–25. I’m grateful to David Lindberg for giving me a copy of this article.
1. The four descriptions of the strange woman (NIV “adulteress”) are in 2:16–19; 5:1–14; 6:24–35; 7:5–27. Each adds its details to the composite picture of the strange woman. The warning in this chapter is filled with images of loss and dissipation, a contrast between keeping what is one’s own and losing it to others (waters and wife). Ch. 6 lays out the problem of the wrathful husband, ch. 7 on the words of the strange woman and their deadly lure. Each description begins with nearly identical words for her seductive speech.
2. Skehan, “The Seven Columns of Wisdom’s House in Proverbs 1–9,” 9–14.
3. Clifford, Proverbs, 69, points out the contrast between the dangers of the forbidden woman (vv. 1–14) and the joys of loving one’s own wife (vv. 15–23).
4. R. L. Harris, “Why Hebrew Sheʾol Was Translated ‘Grave,’ ” in The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation, ed. K. L. Barker (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 58–71. See also E. Merrill’s observation that šeʾol is both a place and power (“
,” NIDOTTE, 4:6–7). The emphasis here is likely on place, the end of the woman’s path.
5. Scott, Proverbs, 54.
6. The young man is to drink from his own cistern, not hers (5:15), and we might even look to the intoxication in 5:19, 20, and 23 as part of the eating and drinking motif.
7. Plaut, Proverbs, 75.
8. Garrett, Proverbs, 91–92, translates, “her ways wander and you do not know it,” arguing that the death of the young man is at issue. The masculine second person “you” is consistent with 5:9, but the third person feminine is consistent with the verbs of 5:3–6. I take it as decisive that “her paths are crooked,” the clear reading, is in parallel with the person who does not consider her paths (so also Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 193).
9. See Perdue, Proverbs, 120–21, for a summary of the view that “strangers” represent foreign religions, and McKane, Proverbs, 311–20, for the argument against it.
10. Blenkinsopp, “The Social Context of the ‘Outsider Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” 457–73. See also Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs, 269. Camp sees the intermarriage of the exiles in Ezra 10:2–11 as a possible background, particularly the forfeiture of property described in 10:8. However, the similarities do not by themselves establish a historical connection. While a canonical reading can better understand the significance of the teaching in Proverbs by reading Ezra, using Ezra as the historical referent is not warranted when reading a text that only makes historical references to Solomon and Hezekiah.
11. See Whybray, Proverbs, 88.
12. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 194–97. Fox rightly suggests that “strength” in 5:9 points to the productivity of procreation and agriculture, both of which produce a kind of wealth and strength. One has offspring to help one build up one’s substance. To lose these would be to lose one’s legacy.
13. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 179–84.
14. See Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 200–201, for a brief history of interpretation.
15. For physical love described as drinking wine, see Song 1:4; 4:10; 5:1; 7:9; 8:2.
16. P. A. Kruger, “Promiscuity or Marriage Fidelity? A Note on Prov. 5:15–18,” JNSL 13 (1987): 61–68.
17. W. C. Kaiser Jr., “True Marital Love in Proverbs 5:15–23 and the Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” in The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke, ed. J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 106–16. Kaiser concludes that the water satisfies a husband’s desire. It is best not to look for distinctions in the five water metaphors (cistern, well, springs, streams, fountain), for they all point to the refreshing and life-giving qualities of water. Because it is scarce and precious in the Middle East, water spilled in the streets is like loss of life.
18. For cisterns privately owned, see 2 Kings 18:31; Isa. 36:16; Jer. 38:6. Kruger views the waters of the cistern and springs in the streets as symbols for one’s wife and the strange woman respectively, but the word for “strangers” in Prov. 5:17 is the masculine zarim, which cannot refer to the strange woman. If, however, the metaphor itself is “fluid,” then we have a hint that others, “strangers,” will ultimately possess what is the man’s own if he takes his own loving attentions and brings them to the street.
19. Hubbard, Proverbs, 93.
20. Scott, Proverbs, 55, translates, “As the saying is. . . .”
21. R. Murphy, “Wisdom and Eros in Proverbs 1–9,” CBQ 50 (1988): 600–603.
22. L. Lyke, “The Song of Songs, Proverbs, and the Theology of Love,” in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, ed. C. Seitz and K. Greene-McCreight (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 210–11. Lyke contends that the metaphors for sexuality have human and divine registers that are “inseparable,” 222–23.
23. J. Goldingay, “Proverbs V and IX,” RB 84 (1977): 80–93, sees no relation between 5:20 and 5:21–23 and relocates verse 20 between 5:2 and 3, but this is unnecessary. Apart from the catchword that connects the three verses, one can also see the strategy for placement in the mirror structure of chs. 4 and 5.
24. Paths can refer to wagon tracks or as a metaphor for “habits” (Kidner, Proverbs, 71).
25. R. Murphy, “The Kerygma of the Book of Proverbs,” Int 20 (1966): 3–14.
26. Basic meaning is “to stray” (Ezek. 34:6), perhaps from drink (Isa. 28:7). One should not lead astray (Deut. 27:18; Prov. 28:10). The term can also stand for unintended error (Gen. 43:12; Ps. 119:67; Prov. 20:1; Eccl. 10:5; Isa. 28:7), but one may not excuse self (Eccl. 5:6) (E. Jenni and C. Westermann, eds., Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. M. E. Biddle, 3 vols. [Peabody Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997], 3:1302–4).
27. Ross, “Proverbs,” 931.
28. After the introduction of the theme in 2:16–19, sixty-five verses deal with sexual conduct. There are more verses devoted to the strange woman than to Woman Wisdom! (see Murphy, “Wisdom and Eros in Proverbs 1–9”).
29. K. Kayser, When Love Dies: The Process of Marital Disaffection (New York and London: Guilford Press, 1993), 1–3.
30. L. B. Smedes, Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 160–67.
31. P. Ricouer, “The Nuptial Metaphor,” in A. La Cocque and P. Ricouer, Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies, trans. D. Pellauer (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998), 266–303.
32. M. Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time I: The Green Stick (New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1973), 269.
33. Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 123.
34. Aitken, Proverbs, 66.
35. J. M. Gottman and L. J. Krokoff, “Marital Interaction and Satisfaction: A Longitudinal View,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 57/1 (1989): 47–52.
36. Karen Kayser observes that couples who view marriage as a lifelong commitment do stay together in greater numbers, in part because of their intention to make it work. She also recommends that couples invest in learning marriage building skills and not wait until there are problems to seek help (When Love Dies, 122–26; 140–47).
37. J. W. McClendon Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986), 1:154. Following Jonathan Edwards, McClendon distinguishes grace-love (that loves for the good of the other) and delight-love (that brings good to the lover). Both are at work in this picture of married love.
38. M. L. Stackhouse, Covenant and Commitments: Faith, Family, and Economic Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), looks to the biblical covenant to guide discussions on marriage and family issues.
39. R. Russo, Straight Man (New York: Random House, 1997), 196.
1. Many interpreters have noted the interruption as well as the apparent lack of coherence in 6:1–19. For a summary, see Harris, Proverbs 1–9: A Study of Inner-Biblical Interpretation, 112–15.
2. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 51, supports those commentators who find a common theme of folly in 6:1–11 and a theme of wickedness in 6:12–19.
3. In Israel, borrowing and lending was to be done in a spirit of charity, without charging interest (Ex. 22:25; Lev. 25:35–37; Ps. 15:5). Debts were to be canceled if one could not pay (Deut. 15:2), and lenders were not to take a millstone necessary for work or a coat necessary for warmth as security against the debt (Deut. 24:6, 10–13). The Bible includes many reports of creditors who were harsh (2 Kings 4:1; Neh. 5:1–12) and charged exorbitant interest (Ezek. 18:8; 22:12).
4. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 213–14, cites Sir. 29:14–20: “Give surety for your neighbor (only) in accordance with your ability, and keep yourself from collapse” (cf. Sir. 8:13).
5. The ant appears again in 30:25 as one of four small but wise creatures; the second line recalls 6:8b (“they gather their food in summer”).
6. A letter from an Akkadian ruler also argues from the ant’s behavior: “Further, when (even) ants are smitten, they do not accept it (passively), but they bite the hand of the man who smites them. How could I hesitate this day when two of my towns are taken?” ANET, 486.
7. The motif is not limited to wisdom writings; the Bible often compares the knowledge of animals with the stubborn foolishness of humans (Job 12:7; Isa. 1:3; Jer. 8:7).
8. Hubbard, Proverbs, 99.
9. Perhaps this is why Jeremiah could complain, “I have neither lent nor borrowed, yet everyone curses me” (Jer. 15:10).
10. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 219, observes that in Judg. 19:22 and 1 Kings 21:10, such men have reputations that precede them.
11. Hubbard, Proverbs, 101, views them as “hexes, spells, evil eyes, harmful omens,” and other acts of magic or witchcraft (cf. Deut. 18:9–14).
12. Whybray, Proverbs, 99–100, points to a similar form in Amos 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 2:1, 4, 6.
13. W. M. W. Roth, Numerical Sayings in the Old Testament: A Form Critical Study (VTSup 13; Leiden: Brill, 1965); “The Numerical Sequence x/x+1 in the Old Testament,” VT 12 (1962): 300–311.
14. Hubbard, Proverbs, 102–3, sets all of 6:1–19 in the context of legal entanglements.
15. Whybray, Composition, 49.
16. Skehan, “The Seven Columns of Wisdom’s House in Proverbs 1–9,” in Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom (CBQMS 1; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1971), 9–14, believes that 6:1–19 correspond to the introduction in ch. 2, particularly the mention of wicked men in 2:12–15. While those men also appear in 4:10–27 and possibly 3:29–35, the juxtaposition of evil men and the other/strange woman in ch. 6 is most like that of 2:12–19.
17. Murphy, Proverbs, 38, sees a reference to the Shema (“Hear O Israel”), Deut. 6:6–9 and 11:18–21, after Maier, Die Fremde Frau in Proverbien 1–9 (OBO 144; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1995), 153–58. Murphy goes on to suggest that parental teaching is placed on a level with that of Moses. Their teaching actualizes the commands, moving from matters of moral legislation to moral character.
18. Note that the woman assures the young man that her husband is on a distant journey in 7:19–20. Fear of meeting the wronged husband shows up in ancient Near Eastern texts as well.
19. E. Liebow, Tally’s Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1967) is the classic study of urban poverty. More recently, B. Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), documents the author’s experience of working at a series of minimum wage jobs.
20. M. R. Gornik, “Practicing Faith in the Inner City,” Books and Culture 7/3 (May/June 2001): 10–12.
21. Harris, Proverbs 1–9: A Study of Inner-Biblical Interpretation, 112–15, looks to the conflict and Judah’s taking of a pledge on behalf of Benjamin, but the connection is tenuous.
22. In Israel and the ancient Near East, adultery was a crime against the wronged husband, not the wife. See L. Purdue, J. Blenkinsopp, J. J. Collins, C. Meyers, Families in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 183–85.
23. For example, the lazy and the wicked are juxtaposed in 10:3–4, 25–26. The scoundrel appears again in 16:27–30. Both chs. 10 and 16 mark the beginning of new sections; see the outline in the introduction.
24. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 74, particularly in realizing when one has made a mistake.
25. B. Hybels, Making Life Work: Putting God’s Wisdom into Action (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 36–38.
26. Ibid., 144.
1. G. A. Yee, “ ‘I Have Perfumed My Bed with Myrrh’: The Foreign Woman (ʾiššâ zārâ) in Proverbs 1–9,” JSOT 43 (1989): 53–68.
2. The viewpoint is extended into the individual sayings as well. The speech of the strange woman is a pit (22:14), and the prostitute is a pit that lies in wait (23:27–28).
3. The Instruction of Any, in AEL, 2:137. See also Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 102–3.
4. Yee, “The Foreign Woman,” 56.
5. Plaut, Proverbs, 99.
6. O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. T. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 210. An ivory plaque from Samaria has a picture of a woman in a series of frames that appears to be a woman looking out a window, but the authors add that it is not clear if it depicts a goddess, a cult prostitute, or someone else.
7. For a summary of the position, see A. Ogden Bellis, “The Gender and Motives of the Wisdom Teacher in Proverbs 7,” in Wisdom and Psalms: The Feminist Companion to the Bible, Second Series, ed. A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 84–86.
8. The apocryphal Sir. 9:7 includes in its warnings about prostitution and adultery, “Do not look around in the streets of a city, or wander about in its deserted sections.”
9. Plaut, Proverbs, 101.
10. P. Bird, “ ‘To Play the Harlot’: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 75–94. Texts like Hosea use the metaphor to name Israel as the despised zonah.
11. Clifford, Proverbs, 83, observes a wordplay on the prostitute’s clothing, so that “the woman may cover her breast (= heart) with a shawl while at the same time covering her heart (= mind, intent).”
12. Garrett, Proverbs, 106, and D. A. Garrett, “Votive Prostitution Again: A Comparison of Proverbs 7:13–14 and 21:28–29,” JBL (1990): 681–82. In both instances, the brazen face indicates a “bold faced lie.”
13. B. A. Musk, “Honour and Shame,” Evangelical Review of Theology 20 (1996): 164.
14. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 57. Alter suggests that in this narrative (rare among biblical poetic texts), reported speech reveals character as it does in prose texts.
15. N. Kiuchi, “Spirituality in Offering a Peace Offering,” TynBul 50 (1999): 23–31.
16. K. Van Der Toorn, “Female Prostitution in Payment of Vows in Ancient Israel,” JBL 108 (1989): 193–205; G. Boström, Proverbia Studien: Die Weisheit und das fremde Weib in Spr. 1–9 (Lund: Gleerup, 1935), 120–34. Boström’s association with the goddess Astarte has been revived by J. B. Burns, “Proverbs 7:6–27: Vignettes from the Cycle of Astarte and Adonis,” SJOT 9 (1995): 20–36.
17. T. W. Carledge, Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 55, 140. Clifford, Proverbs, 88–89, draws an interesting parallel with Judg. 11:30–31. The common vocabulary of “vow,” “come out,” and “meet,” suggests that the young man, like Jepthah’s daughter, will become a sacrifice that fulfills a vow, but this connection is tenuous.
18. However, linens and spices on a bed can also signify death and burial (2 Chron. 16:14; Matt. 27:59; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:53; John 11:44b; 19:40; 20:7). See R. H. O’Connell, “Proverbs VII 6–17: A Case of Fatal Deception in a ‘Woman and the Window’ Type-Scene,” VT 41 (1991): 235–41.
19. Alter, Art of Biblical Poetry, 59.
20. The word appears a third time when she says that her husband has “taken” a bag of money (7:20), even as his wife “takes” the young man with her “teaching.”
21. The NIV footnote follows the versions in reconstructing the Heb. to read, “like a fool to the stocks for punishment” (TNK).
22. N. S. Murrell, “Hermeneutics as Interpretation Part 2: Contextual Truths in Sub-Version Preaching,” Caribbean Journal of Evangelical Theology 3 (1999): 53–57.
23. Blenkinsopp, “The Social Context of the ‘Outsider Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” 457–73; H. C. Washington, “The Strange Woman (ʾissa zara/nokriya) of Proverbs 1–9 and Post-Exilic Judaean Society,” in Second Temple Studies 2: Temple and Community in the Persian Period, ed. T. C. Eskenazi and K. H. Richards (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 217–42. The translators of the LXX took the other/strange woman as a symbol of foreign wisdom, particularly Greek philosophy; see J. Cook, “ʾishah zarah (Proverbs 1–9 Septuagint): A Metaphor for Foreign Wisdom?” ZAW 106 (1994): 458–76.
24. See, e.g., C. V. Camp, “What’s So Strange About the Strange Woman?” in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis, ed. D. Jobling et. al. (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1991), 17–31.
25. C. Maier, “Conflicting Attractions: Parental Wisdom and the ‘Strange Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” in Wisdom and Psalms: A Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series), ed. A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 102.
26. An example of a clearly identified allegory is the parable of the trees in Judg. 9:7–21.
27. Yee, “The Foreign Woman,” 53–68. C. L. Seow, “Dangerous Seductress or Elusive Lover? The Woman of Ecclesiastes 7,” in Women, Gender, and Christian Community, ed. J. D. Douglass and J. F. Kay (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 23–33. Seow adds to the list of seductresses the woman who is a snare in Eccl. 7:25–29.
28. J. Cheryl Exum suggests that we always ask the question of a text, “Whose interests are being served?” J. C. Exum, “Feminist Criticism: Whose Interests Are Being Served?” in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, ed. G. A. Yee (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 65–90.
29. C. A. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 142–60.
30. A. Brenner “Proverbs 1–9: an F Voice?” and F. van Dijk-Hemmes, “Traces of Women’s Texts in the Hebrew Bible,” in On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible, ed. A. Brenner and F. Van Dijk-Hemmes (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 113–30.
31. Bellis, “Gender and Motives,” 79–91. Bellis reminds readers that this concern for sexual freedom in particular and women’s freedom in general is both Western and contemporary; it was most likely not part of the cultural understanding of the original audience.
32. Ibid., 90–91.
33. C. Camp, “Wise and Strange: An Interpretation of the Female Imagery in Proverbs in Light of Trickster Mythology,” in A Feminist Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. A. Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 150; originally published in Semeia 42 (1988): 14–26.
34. For this reason, teachers of past generations, such as Richard Rolle, also warned young Christians to steer clear of women: “For nothing so harms a novice, nor is there any thing that so quickly draws the one sitting in prayer away from the heavenly symphony . . . like the pleasing beauty of a beautiful woman.” Quoted in A. W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1990), 113.
35. G. Spencer, A Heart for Truth: Taking Your Faith to College (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 115–33.
36. Clifford, Proverbs, 86–87, after D. Grossberg, “Two Kinds of Sexual Relationships in the Hebrew Bible,” HS 35 (1994): 7–25.
37. The teacher’s voice continues into chs. 8 and 9 as it quotes Wisdom and then Folly, but the direct address of “my son” disappears.
38. F. Rich, “Naked Capitalists,” New York Times Magazine (May 20, 2001), 51.
39. M. Sanborn and T. Paulson, eds., Meditations for the Road Warrior (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), cited in C. Crosby, “Advice for the Road Warrior,” Life@Work Journal 1/3 (August, 1998): 10–11.
40. R. M. Saucier, “One Reporter’s Story,” in Restoring the Soul of a Church: Healing Congregations Wounded by Clergy Sexual Misconduct, ed. N. M. Hopkins, and M. Laaser (Collegeville: Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995), 191.
41. The image is Spencer’s, A Heart for Truth, 115–16.
1. See the discussion on personification in 1:20–33.
2. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 1:135–37, sees a structure similar to the speech in ch. 1: Introduction (8:1–3; cf. 1:20–31), Wisdom’s Speech (8:4–36; cf. 1:22–33), Invitation (8:32–36; cf. 1:32–33). He notes that in 8:4–11, four lines speak to her addressees (vv. 4–5), eight to the quality of her speech (vv. 6–9), and four to the comparison of wisdom with treasures (vv. 10–11).
3. R. Murphy, “The Kerygma of the Book of Proverbs,” Int 20 (1966): 5.
4. G. A. Yee, “The Theology of Creation in Proverbs 8:22–31,” in Creation in the Biblical Traditions, ed. R. J. Clifford and J. J. Collins (CBQMS 24; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1992), 86.
5. E. Scheffer, “Archaeology and Wisdom,” OTE 10 (1997): 459–73.
6. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 267, sees Woman Wisdom moving between places within and without the city walls.
7. Some commentators emend the word negidim (lit. “nobles” or “princes”) to read “straight things,” but Kidner, Proverbs, 77, disagrees. Perhaps here is a pun that looks ahead to wisdom’s assistance of kings and governors in vv. 15 and 16. Garrett, Proverbs, 107, suggests emending to “discerning” (mebin) after v. 9.
8. Murphy, Proverbs, 50.
9. T. B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1993), 94–99, contends that establishing good character is not the task of the speaker alone but audience and communicator together. See 1:5 and 9:9 for a similar strategy of appeal to the character of the listener.
10. Comparable to the woman of Tekoa (2 Sam. 14), Abigail (1 Sam. 25), and Bathsheba (1 Kings 1); S. Schroer, “Wise and Counseling Women in Ancient Israel: Literary and Historical Ideals of the Personified HOKMA,” in A. Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to Wisdom Literature (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 67–84.
11. E. Teeter, The Presentation of MAAT: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt (SAOC 57; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1997). Teeter understands the scene as a legitimation of the king’s competence and authority to govern.
12. So, e.g., The Code of Hammurabi begins, “At that time Anum and Enlil named me to promote the welfare of the people, me, Hammurabi, the devout, god-fearing prince, to cause justice to prevail in the land. Hammurabi, the shepherd, called by Enlil am I, the one who makes affluence and plenty abound” (ANET, 164).
13. Murphy, Proverbs, 49. Clifford, Proverbs, 93, adds that the use of the first-person “I” sound unites the Heb. text of 8:12–21.
14. R. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 90, and “Liminality and Worldview in Proverbs 1–9,” Semeia 50 (1990): 111–44.
15. Clifford, Proverbs, 95.
16. B. Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture (New York: St. Martins, 1994), 63–66, 157–59, calls this a metonymic function of artistic works: “Metonymy occurs when something complex is reduced to a more manageable sign of complex things, as when the complexities of British government are reduced into the public figures of the Prime Minister, or of the reigning monarch.”
17. H. C. Brichto, Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets (New York: Oxford, 1992), 258. “Biblical Hebrew, to the best of my knowledge, has no word for the abstraction expressed in our word art. And even in modern Hebrew there is no alternative to the loan word humor. Artistry, however, is one of the meanings of hokma (wisdom), and the closest approximation to the humorous is the root ṣḥq (smile, jeer, laugh).”
18. R. Murphy, The Tree of Life, 147, says: “The best one can say is that Lady Wisdom is a divine communication: God’s communication, extension, of self to human beings. And that is no small insight the biblical wisdom literature bequeaths to us.”
19. C. Fontaine, “The Social Roles of Women in the World of Wisdom,” in A Feminist Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. A. Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 33–34, observes that the speech of the other woman is a reverse image of the wifely virtues of ch. 31 and a perverse use of Woman Wisdom’s power of speech in chs. 1, 8, and 9.
20. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. G. A. Kennedy (New York/Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), 2.1 (120–21). Kennedy uses the terms “practical wisdom” (phronesis), “virtue” (arete), and “good will” (eunoia).
21. I. W. Provan, “On ‘Seeing’ the Trees While Missing the Forest: The Wisdom of Characters and Readers in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Old Testament Interpretation in Honour of Ronald E. Clements, ed. E. Ball (JSOTSup 300; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 153–73. Provan argues that every mention of wisdom prior to Solomon’s requests illustrates the limitations of human wisdom and its machinations.
22. W. Janzen, Old Testament Ethics: A Paradigmatic Approach (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 17–19, calls the account a “wisdom model story” after P. K. McCarter Jr., I Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes and Commentary (AB8; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 401. McCarter saw it as “a story about the education of a future king. David is like the young man to whom much of the Book of Proverbs is addressed. . . .”
23. See also Provan, “On ‘Seeing’ the Trees,” 165–71.
24. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 1:139.
25. C. Knechtle, Give Me an Answer That Satisfies My Heart and Mind (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986).
26. J. Ellul, Money and Power, trans. L. Neff (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 35–72.
27. R. J. Foster, Money, Sex, and Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 175. Foster’s discussion of power is essential reading.
28. The phrase is borrowed from R. Fisher and W. Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (New York: Penguin, 1981).
29. Foster, Money, Sex, and Power, 228–48.
1. The concerns for speaker credibility, or rhetorical ethos, were discussed in 8:1–21. We might say with only a little exaggeration that the concerns of ethos shape the whole speech. The three qualities of the trustworthy speaker are: good character (integrity) 8:1–11; good will (love) 8:12–21; good sense (competence) 8:22–31.
2. Habel, “The Symbolism of Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9,” 131–57, argues that the primary symbol of the book is derek, the way of wisdom. Personified Wisdom is first a guide and protector, then the wayside counselor, then the cosmic, primordial force, who is “the beginning, impetus and source of Yahweh’s own way.”
3. Aitkin, Proverbs, 82, helpfully points out that the root meaning of “acquire” can be used for the acts of purchasing (Gen. 47:20), creating (Gen. 14:19), or begetting (Gen. 4:1). See also B. Vawter, “Proverbs 8:22: Wisdom and Creation,” JBL 99 (1980): 205–16, who would retain the meaning “acquire.”
4. J. A. Foster, “The Motherhood of God: The Use of God-Language in the Hebrew Scriptures,” in Uncovering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson, ed. L. M. Hope (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994): 93–102. After examining the four uses of the term for birthing (here and Deut. 32:18; Ps. 90:1–2; Isa. 45:9–11), Foster concludes that the point is not so much the motherhood of God as the imagery of creation having a beginning like a birth, so she translates “to bring forth in pain” or to “writhe in labor.”
5. Murphy, Proverbs, 52, sees a similar motif at work in Eliphaz’s taunts to Job (Job 15:7–8).
6. Each line begins with Hebrew be, which the niv translates “when.”
7. So we recall that the creation is a separating of waters above and below by means of a sky-firmament and a separation of dry land and seas by boundaries (back to Gen. 1 and 9). Job asked who possessed the wisdom to count the clouds and tip over the water jars of the heavens, and the answer to his rhetorical question is Yahweh (Job 38:37). Note Ps. 78:23: “Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens.”
8. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 93–94; although the symbolic connection he sees between the waters here and the waters of sexuality in 5:15–20 is not as obvious. The link between boundaries of the sea and human behavior in Jer. 5:21–29 is much closer to the imagery set out here. On the boundaries of the sea, see Job 38:8–11; Ps. 104:6–9; 148:4–6.
9. G. A. Yee, “An Analysis of Prov. 8:22–31 According to Style and Structure,” ZAW 94 (1982): 58–66.
10. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 287.
11. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 94–95, notes the delight and celebration at the completion of a construction project (1 Kings 8:62–66; Job 38:7; Jer. 30:18–19; 31:4; Zech. 8:5). Use of the verb for dancing and rejoicing at victory can be found at 1 Sam. 18:7; 2 Sam. 6:5, 21; 1 Chron. 13:8; 15:29; Jer. 30:19; 31:4.
12. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 288–89, suggests that she plays before God, enjoying her study of the wonders of his work in the world, just as study in the Jewish tradition is considered a joy. See also Yee, “Theology of Creation” 85–96.
13. Perhaps this laughter plays on the mocking laughter of Wisdom’s detractors (śḥq italicized): fools find pleasure in evil conduct (10:23), a wicked person can deceive a neighbor and claim to have been joking (26:19), and a fool can go to court and scoff/mock (29:9), bringing misery.
14. C. L. Rogers III, “The Meaning and Significance of the Hebrew Word ʾamon in Proverbs 8:30,” ZAW 109 (1997): 208–20, argues that the words are in apposition, translating, “I was beside him, who is an ʾamon,” naming Yahweh, not Wisdom, as artisan. Murphy, Proverbs, 47, seeks to preserve the ambiguity with “Then I was with him, as artisan.”
15. Clifford, Proverbs, 23–28, 100–101, follows the tradition that takes ʾamon as a loanword from Akkadian ummānu, the scribe or sage who brought the arts to the world. She is therefore not a counselor to Yahweh but to humankind. See also Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 94–95, who argues that the ummānu does represent an “architect-adviser.”
16. V. Hurowitz, “Nursling, Advisor, Architect? ʾamon and the Role of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22–31,” Bib 80 (1999): 391–400; M. Fox, “ʾamon Again,” JBL 115 (1996): 699–702, argues for “being raised, growing up” (cf. Est. 2:20).
17. The images of building are clear in the poem, but it is not clear to me how this is creating a safe place for Wisdom to play as Yee, “Theology of Creation” 85–96, argues.
18. C. V. Camp, Wise, Strange, and Holy (JSOTSup 320; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), uses the symbols of Wisdom and the strange woman as a lens for the conflict in the Bible between that which is holy and that which is not.
19. While Wisdom may serve as a symbol of created order, as von Rad observed, she is more than the “self-revelation of creation.” G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 144–76. Murphy, Proverbs, 54–55, adds that she is the “revelation of God.”
20. So W. P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 10–11, speaks of character using the original meaning of ethos as “stall” or “dwelling.” “At base, it designates a place or habitation.”
21. G. M. Landes, “Creation Tradition in Proverbs 8:22–31 and Genesis 1,” in A Light Unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers, ed. H. N. Bream, R. D. Heim, C. A. Moore (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 279–93. Both texts included the presence of primordial waters and the motif of priority in creation, but Prov. 8 uses ten different words for creation whereas Gen. 1 uses three or four. See also M. Bauks and G. Baumann, “Im Angang war . . . ? Gen. 1:1ff and Prov. 8:22–31 im Vergleich,” Biblische Notizen 71 (1994): 24–52.
22. So also the “twin pillars” of creation and covenant are woven throughout wisdom theology. R. L. Schultz, “Unity or Diversity in Wisdom Theology? A Canonical and Covenantal Perspective,” TynBul 48/2 (1997): 271–306.
23. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, 12–27, reminds us that ancient Near Eastern creation accounts often stood as symbols of the ideal social order.
24. C. V. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs (BLS 11; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1985), suggests that the symbol of Wisdom was a strategic response to the loss of the monarchy in postexilic Judaism.
25. S. Cole, M. Ronan, H. Taussig, Wisdom’s Feast: Sophia in Study and Celebration, new ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1996). Included in this new edition is a report of the Sophia movement in the 1980s and early 1990s.
26. K. H. Jobes, “Sophia Christology: The Way of Wisdom?” The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke, ed. J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 226–50, examines the claims of the Sophia movement in detail before concluding that the regendering is both anachronistic to the time of the Bible and inappropriate for our own. See also the discussions of personified Wisdom in 1:20–33 in this commentary.
27. S. Schroer, “Wise and Counseling Women in Ancient Israel: Literary and Historical Ideals of the Personified HOKMA,” in A. Brenner ed., A Feminist Companion to Wisdom Literature (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 195. Schroer believes that Wisdom’s picture of a counseling woman who can challenge, rejoice, and become angry is true to women’s experience.
28. See K. M. O’Connor, “Wisdom Literature and Experience of the Divine,” in Biblical Theology: Problems and Perspectives (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 183–95, who writes: “In contemporary rereadings of the text, Wisdom offers biblical theology a symbol of God who breaks the boundaries of gender and nationality, who relates to humans in intimacy and mutuality, and who joins them to the earth and to one another at her banquet of life.” O’Connor goes on to argue that the speech is an example of ancient Near Eastern aretology, in which a goddess praises herself. “Hence Proverbs 8:1–21 and the poems that follow (8:22–32, 32–36) by their very genre, cast Wisdom as a divine being.”
29. T. Longman III, How to Read Proverbs (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 109–10, reminds us that personification is a metaphor, a poetic device. Therefore, we must treat the analogy as a response to this poetic description of wisdom.
30. This discussion is indebted to D. H. Williams, “Proverbs 8:22–31,” Int 48 (1994): 275–79; and F. C. Holmgren, The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus: Embracing Change, Maintaining Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 139–91.
31. E. Achtemeier, Preaching Hard Texts of the Old Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998), 111–15, reminds us that “personified wisdom is not divine or a hypostatsis or an incarnation of God: The monotheistic Hebrew Scriptures would never accept such a doctrine. She reveals the ways of God—of love and righteousness and life—that are built into the structure of the universe. Indeed we would not go wrong if we characterized wisdom as the plan of God, whereby he has ordered all the natural world and directed the course of human history,” 112.
32. Does this picture of a teaching woman speak to the issue of women’s leadership in the church’s ministry? Even if we grant that Wisdom is a personified literary figure and not a real teaching woman, she also embodies the roles of counseling women in the Old Testament, including Lemuel’s mother in Prov. 31. This image in itself does not establish a warrant, but it points toward a picture of women active in ministry, not away from it. See R. T. France, Women in the Church’s Ministry: A Test Case for Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), for a discussion of approaches to the question and a position favoring women in ministry.
33. R. Murphy, “The Kerygma of the Book of Proverbs,” Int 20 (1966): 3–14. “Only wisdom personified is said to proclaim (kerusso) in the LXX. What is the message? It is the message of life.”
34. P. A. Olson, The Journey to Wisdom: Self-Education in Patristic and Medieval Literature (Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1995), contends that the early and medieval Christians did not foster a cavalier attitude toward the environment, as some have charged, but rather that their understanding of the wisdom tradition encouraged reverence toward the created world. D. Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995), overreads the connection of Wisdom and Jesus but makes important points about environmental stewardship that are supported by the general teaching of Proverbs.
35. For a description of DeWitt’s work, see Q. J. Schultze, Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 1–4.
1. M. Odell Gilchrist, “Proverbs 1–9: Instruction or Riddle?” Proceedings of the Eastern Great Lakes and Midwest Biblical Societies 4 (1984): 131–45, believes that the instruction genre does not fit this chapter and that chs. 1–9 together form a riddle to expound the thematic statement of 1:1–7. McKane, Proverbs, 1–10, acknowledges that less than half of chs. 1–9 conforms to this definition of instruction. Moreover, the antithesis between avoiding the other woman and embracing Wisdom is not seen in Egyptian charges to avoid adultery.
2. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 1:156.
3. Whybray argues that the prologue of Proverbs provides the hermeneutical lens for the rest of the book and should be consulted as a touchstone for interpretation, but not as a clue to a “grand structural scheme” (Reading the Psalms as a Book [JSOTSup 222; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], 84).
4. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Building God’s House: An Exploration in Wisdom,” in The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke, ed. J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 204–11, shows the parallel between God’s founding the earth by wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (3:10–20) and building a house (24:3–4).
5. K. G. Sandelin, Wisdom as Nourisher: A Study of An Old Testament Theme, Its Development Within Early Judaism and its Impact on Early Christianity (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1986), 19–26. Sandelin shows how early Jewish and Christian communities did such allegorical reading.
6. M. V. Fox, “Ideas of Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9,” JBL 116 (1997): 626. See also Sir. 32:1–13.
7. Estes, Hear My Son, 122; Aitken, Proverbs, 90; Whybray, Proverbs, 142–43.
8. Clifford, Proverbs, 106.
9. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 102.
10. Skehan, “The Seven Columns of Wisdom’s House in Proverbs 1–9,” 9–14. Again, allegorical fancy has derived every sort of referent for the seven pillars, including the seven days of creation, the seven planets, the seven liberal arts, and the seven fruits of the spirit (see Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 297–98).
11. Susan Niditch suggests that it is a victory-enthronement banquet on the analogy of Isa. 55 (Oral World and Written Word, 22). Clifford, Proverbs, 104, notes that Isa. 55 requires turning from evil before eating the sacred meal; he also thinks that Folly’s call resembles the goddess Anat’s deceptive and dangerous invitation to Aqhat.
12. The picture extends the images of the tree of life (3:18), the protector (4:6–9), and a “sister” (7:4). In a sense, all three of the intervening images can be interpreted as metaphors for a good wife.
13. R. C. Stallman, “Divine Hospitality and Wisdom’s Banquet in Proverbs 9:1–6,” in The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke, ed. J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 117–33. However, I do not agree with Stallman that Wisdom represents God, who is the host. Rather, she resembles him, and her feast resembles his provision of the wisdom tradition, which will teach and nourish those who accept the call.
14. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 1:155–58.
15. The righteous person has appeared before (2:20; 3:33; 4:18), but for the first time such a one is associated with wisdom, perhaps a foreshadow of the contrast between the righteous and wicked central to chs. 10–15.
16. In the ancient Near East, teachers recognized that everyone can be taught, but some will not learn. The problem was not a lack of intelligence but will. M. V. Fox, “Who Can Learn? A Dispute in Ancient Pedagogy,” in Wisdom You Are My Sister (CBQMS 29; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 62–77.
17. The LXX adds some exposition: “Son, if you are wise for yourself, you shall also be wise for your neighbors; and if you should prove wicked, you alone will bear the evil. He that stays himself upon falsehoods, attempts to rule the winds, and the same will pursue birds in their flight: for he has forsaken the ways of his own vineyard, and he has caused the axles of his own husbandry to go astray; and he goes through a dry desert, and a land appointed to drought, and he gathers barrenness with his hands.”
18. C. V. Camp, “Woman Wisdom as Root Metaphor: A Theological Consideration,” in The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom and the Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, ed. K. Hoglund et al. (JSOTSup 58; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 45–76.
19. The word “guests” comes from qrʾ, “to call.” The LXX does not present a tragic ending in 9:18: “But he knows that mighty men die by her, and he falls in with a snare of hell. But hasten away, delay not in the place, neither fix your eye upon her: for thus you shall go through strange water; but abstain from strange water, and drink not of a strange fountain, that you may live long, and years of life may be added to you.”
20. Gilchrist, “Proverbs 1–9: Instruction or Riddle?” 131–45.
21. R. Murphy, “The Faces of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs,” in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, ed. A. Caquot and M. Delcor (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981), 337–45. Murphy proposes that the inaccessibility of wisdom in Job and limits on human attainment in Ecclesiastes distanced wisdom so that Woman Wisdom and her call developed as a integration of divine call and human response.
22. Stallman, “Divine Hospitality,” 120.
23. R. Mason, Old Testament Pictures of God (Oxford: Regents Park College, 1993), 201–2. Mason adds that the personification also shows a breakthrough of the feminine part of God.
24. “Fear of the LORD” frames the instructions of chs. 1–2 and 8–9 (1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10; the phrase also appears in 10:27; 14:27; 15:33; 19:23; 22:4; 31:30). Themes appear in mirror fashion. In the first and last, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning” (1:7; 9:10), in the second and fourth it leads one to shun evil (1:29; 8:13), and the middle appearance urges seeking and finding Wisdom (8:13).
25. So also with the acquisition of “understanding” (binah). The proverbs promise to teach how one understands words of insight (1:2); the father urges the son to acquire understanding (4:1, 5, 7); Wisdom claims to possess understanding (8:14) and to be able to help others acquire it (9:6), directing them to the fear of the Lord and knowledge of the Holy One that is understanding (9:10).
26. Estes, Hear My Son, 123.
27. P. H. Gibbon, “The End of Admiration: The Media and the Loss of Heroes,” Vital Speeches of the Day 65 (June 15, 1999): 523.
28. W. D. Romanowski, Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Life (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996). See also Romanowski’s Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001).
29. N. Gabler, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), argues that our understanding of life has been profoundly shaped by the “reality” of the movies.
1. J. Goldingay, “The Arrangement of Sayings in Proverbs 10–15,” JSOT 61 (1994): 75–83. See also the outline of the book of Proverbs in the introduction.
2. Clifford, Proverbs, 111.
3. T. Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Strings: Cohesion in Proverbs 10,” GTJ 11 (1990): 171–85, divides into vv. 1–5, 6–11, 12–21, 22–30 (vv. 31–32 start a new string that continues into ch. 11).
4. Goldingay, “The Arrangement of Sayings in Proverbs 10–15,” 79.
5. A. Berlin, “On Reading Biblical Poetry: The Role of Metaphor,” VTSup 66 (1997): 25–36: “The basic form of metaphor is parallelism, in the sense of the contiguous or syntagmatic arrangement of paradigmatic elements such that unlikes become alike. The inevitable conclusion is that both parallelism and metaphor are the defining characteristics of biblical poetry.”
6. See the comments on “What Is a Proverb” in the introduction.
7. As recommended by T. Longman III, How to Read Proverbs, 117–44. See also the commentaries by Kidner, Hubbard, and Farmer.
8. T. Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Pairs: Compositional Units in Proverbs 1–29,” JBL 107 (1988): 207–24.
9. See Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Strings,” 171–85. Proverb sentences are bonded by catchwords, rhetorical devices, themes, sound echoes, and shared syntactic construction.
10. N. Sarna, “Psalm 89: A Study in Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass.: Haward Univ. Press, 1963), 29–46.
11. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 66–68.
12. K. M. Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver: An Interpretation of Proverbial Clusters in Proverbs 10:1–22:6 (BZAW 273; Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001).
13. Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence, 133.
14. Ibid., 279.
15. A. Niccacci, “Analyzing Biblical Hebrew Poetry,”JSOT 74 (1997): 82.
16. R. Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung (BZAW 232; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 174.
17. Clifford, Proverbs, 111.
18. Murphy, Proverbs, 77.
19. K. Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1945).
20. See Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Strings,” 173–74; Whybray, Composition, 84, 86–87, 94, notes the relationships between the proverbs but not the concentric structure.
21. However, the many overlapping links allow for different perceptions of structure. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 106–7, sets out a chiastic structure framed by the terms “wise” and “fool” in verses 1 and 8. T. A. Perry, Wisdom Literature and the Structure of Proverbs (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1993), 73, believes that the negative and positive statements of vv. 1–2 and 3–4 relate to one another chiastically, thus setting vv. 1–4 apart. Neither takes account of the repetition of “son” or the shift to metaphors for speech that begins in v. 6.
22. As preferred by Kidner, Proverbs, 85.
23. Clifford, Proverbs, 113, who also argues that a chiastic pattern in the verse argues for reading the “mouth of the wicked as subject.
24. Garrett, Proverbs, 118, takes the repetition as intentional rhetorical device that marks off a section.
25. Coldingay, “The Arrangement of Sayings in Proverbs 10–15,” 79–80, argues that the translation, “the mouth of the wicked covers violence,” highlights the sages’ desire to repeat terms and phrases with different meanings.
26. “Covers” is also used in v. 18 in relation to “hatred.”
27. Murphy, Proverbs, 74.
28. So Kidner, Proverbs, 87, who sees the wise “storing up for the right occasion . . . it refers to discretion, not erudition.” See also Clifford, Proverbs, 114, “The wise feel no need to express all their knowledge in words.”
29. Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Pairs,” 214.
30. Clifford, Proverbs, 115, translates ḥaṭṭaʾt “want” (cf. 21:4; Job 14:16; also Rom. 6:21).
31. Murphy, Proverbs, 70–71.
32. Garrett, Proverbs, 120.
33. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,”112. Other proverbs on the incongruous: 25:20; 26:1; 27:14. On the sluggard, see 6:6; 13:4; 15:19; 19:24, 20:4; 21:25, 22:13; 24:30–34, 26:14–16.
34. Garrett, Proverbs, 121.
35. Clifford, Proverbs, 112, finds the three main concerns of Proverbs in vv. 1–3: v. 1, sapiential; v. 2, ethical; v. 3, religious. These inseparable concerns recall the prologue of 1:1–7. So also Goldingay, “The Arrangement of Sayings in Proverbs 10–15,” 81–82.
36. Garrett, Proverbs, 117.
37. V. Stem Owens, “What Shall We Do with Mother?” Books and Culture 5/4 (July/August 1999): 16–19.
38. R. Conwell, “Acres of Diamonds,” in Three Centuries of American Rhetorical Discourse: An Anthology and Review, ed. R. F. Reid (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1988), 573–86. His is the second name in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
39. A. Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays (New York: The Century Co., 1900). See also M. Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, & Co., 1984), 307–11.
40. See A. R. Ceresko, “The Sage in the Psalms,” in The Sage in lsrael and the Ancient Near East, ed. J. C. Carnmie and L. C. Perdue (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 217–30.
41. J. C. McCann, “Wisdom’s Dilemma: The Book of Job, the Final Form of the Book of Psalms, and the Entire Bible,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister, ed. M. L. Barre (CBQMS 29; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 18–30.
42. Ibid., 19.
43. Outside of the sluggard sayings in the collected proverbs (10:26; 13:4; 15:19; 19:24; 20:4; 21:25; 22:13), there are three extended portraits (6:6–11; 24:30–33; 26:12–16).
44. “What is fitting” in 10:32 can also be translated “favor” (raṣon), that which is pleasing to others, the word is used in Isa. 42:1 to describe the delight of Yahweh in his servant.
45. C. Wysong, “Code Blue: An Urgent Call to Save Our Kids,” The Covenant Companion (September 1999), 6–9.
46. C. Loscalzo, Evangelistic Preaching That Connects: Guidance in Shaping Fresh and Appealing Sermons (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 47.
47. Q. J. Schultze, Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 116–17.
48. K. Erickson, “Words, Words, Words,” presented in Communication Skills for Ministry class at North Park Theological Seminary, March 29, 2001.
49. C. Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms (Atlanta: John Knox), 1981.
50. R. K. Johnston, “Practicing the Presence of Cod: The Wisdom Psalms as Prayer,” in To Hear and Obey: Essays in Honor of Fredrick Carlson Holmgren, ed. B. J. Bergfalk and P. E. Koptak (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1997), 20–41, esp. 25: “What we have in the wisdom psalms is a joining of instruction with prayer, prayer with instruction.”
1. Garrett, Proverbs, 124.
2. Interpreters have not reached any agreement on structure. A. Scherer, Das weise Wort und seine Wirkung, 88, divides vv. 1–2, 3–8, 9–13, 14–16, 17–23, 24–26, 27 (theme verse), 28–30. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, divides vv. 1–2, 3–8, 9–15, 16–22, 23–27, 28–30, 31. Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 196, divides larger sections according to framing verses, 10:28–11:7, 11:8–12:13 (with subsections 11:8–17 and 12:4–13).
3. Garrett, Proverbs, 48, observes that “random repetition” of certain themes uses the element of surprise to show emphasis, perhaps more effectively than placing them in single clusters (eg. 17:1, 9, 14, 19, 27–28).
4. Whybray, Proverbs, 176.
5. Murphy and Huwiler, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, 54.
6. Clifford, Proverbs, 122; cf. Ps. 49:12: “But man, despite his riches, does not endure; he is like the beasts that perish.”
7. A. Scherer, “Is the Selfish Man Wise?: Considerations of Context in Proverbs 10:1–22:16 with Special Regard to Surety, Bribery, and Friendship,” JSOT 76 (1997): 82.
8. Whybray, Proverbs, 179.
9. A similar view comes from Sir. 29:14–20. “A good person will be surety for his neighbor, but the one who has lost all sense of shame will fail him. . . . Being surety has ruined many who were prosperous, and has tossed them about like waves of the sea; it has driven the influential into exile, and they have wandered among foreign nations. The sinner comes to grief through surety; his pursuit of gain involves him in lawsuits. Assist your neighbor to the best of your ability, but be careful not to fall yourself” (NRSV).
10. Scherer, “Is the Selfish Man Wise?” 62–63.
11. Clifford, Proverbs, 124; Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 118–19.
12. Clifford, Proverbs, 124–25; also Murphy, Proverbs, 80.
13. W. van Heerden, “Proverbial Wisdom, Metaphor and Inculturation,” OTE 10 (1997): 518–19.
14. Clifford, Proverbs, 125–26, suggests that nepeš be translated in its basic sense of “throat” or “neck,” yielding “the throat of blessing will grow fat.”
15. G. T. Sheppard, Wisdom As a Hermeneutical Construct: A Study in the Sapientialising of the Old Testament (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 53–54. See also Sir. 1:16–20; 6:19 and the motif of the exalted garden as new paradise (cf. Deut. 8:7–10; Ezek. 40:1–48:32).
16. Many interpreters attempt to solve the problem by reading the word for “wise” (ḥakam) as ḥamas (“violence”), after the LXX’s “lawless”; thus, the REB and NRSV translate, “violence takes lives away.”
17. D. C. Snell, “ ‘Taking Souls’ in Proverbs 11:30,” VT (1983): 362–65. Snell quotes the medieval commentator Moses Qimhi, “Or again, one who ‘takes’ souls with his wisdom saves [them] from evil.”
18. W. I. Irwin, “The Metaphor in Proverbs 11:30,” Bib 65 (1984): 97–100.
19. Whybray, Proverbs, 188–89, cites Eccl. 7:20 in support: “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.”
20. Irwin, “The Metaphor in Proverbs 11:30,” 97–100.
21. D. F. Ford, The Shape of Living: Spiritual Directions for Everyday Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 103.
22. J. Ellul, Money and Power, trans. L. Neff (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 73–99, speaks of the money as power that seeks human worship, even as Jesus used the Aramaic Mammon (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13) to personify it as “sort of a god.”
23. D. S. Cohen, The Ramapo Mountain People (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1974), 198–99. Another member of the community was quoted: “I’m glad to read the truth for once. The others who wrote about us just repeated the same old lies. . . . The kids are looked down upon in school because of the lies others have heard—that’s why some of them don’t want to finish school.”
24. M. J. Morey, “Answering God’s Call,” The Covenant Companion (March 2000), 24–25.
1. Perhaps 12:1–15 go together in a chiastic pattern, the first and last verses forming an inclusio on learning and listening.
A 12:1 Love discipline, love knowledge
B 12:2 Good find favor
C 12:3 Root of the righteous endures
D 12:4 Wives bring honor and shame
E 12:5–7 Wicked vanish, righteous stand
D′ 12:8–11 Praise and blame of workers
C′ 12:12 Root of the righteous flourishes
B′ 12:13–14 Filled with good things
A′ 12:15 Wise listens to counsel
Likewise, 12:16–23 may form a subsection framed by the use of “prudent” in v. 16 and v. 23 and “truthful” in v. 17 and v. 22 (see the comments on vv. 13–23). The repetition of key words seems intentional.
2. Similar to A. Scherer, Das weise Wort und seine Wirkung, 109, who isolates 12:1 as an introduction, and K. M. Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver: An Interpretation of Proverbial Clusters in Proverbs 10:1–22:6 (BZAW 273; Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 155–57, who sets 12:25 with 12:16–23.
3. The phrases “lack bread” and “lack sense” may form an inclusio (Garrett, Proverbs, 131).
A 12:16 Prudent overlooks an insult
B 12:17 Truthful witness/false (mirmah) witness
C 12:18 Tongue of wise—healing
D 12:19–20 Truthful lips, deceitful (mirmah) hearts
C′ 12:21 No harm to righteous
B′ 12:22 Truthful lips—Yahweh’s delight
A′ 12:23 Prudent keeps knowledge to self
5. R. Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 196–203. Scolarlick links 12:1–13 with 11:8–11 and 12:14–28 with 13:1–2. While 12:14 and 13:2 both use the phrase “fruit of the mouth” in association with “good,” it is not immediately apparent to me that the repetition forms an inclusio.
6. Garrett, Proverbs, 133, links 12:24–28 in an ABCABC order according to theme. But v. 25 most closely resembles v. 20, and the repetition of “way” in vv. 26 and 28 suggests a pattern of ABCAC.
7. Garrett, Proverbs, 131, marks vv. 12–14 as a thematic grouping.
8. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 127.
9. The Greek Septuagint calls that anxiety a “fearful word.”
10. J. A. Emerton, “A Note on Proverbs 12:26,” ZAW 76 (1964): 191–93, vocalizes the Heb. yater as Hophal of ntr and translates “The righteous is delivered from harm, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.”
11. There are three books that I often recommend or assign in classes: R. L. Randall, Let’s Talk: Helping Couples, Groups, and Individuals Communicate (Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press, 1997), recommends attending to the purpose or frame of mind from which another speaks. M. P. Nichols, The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships (New York: Guilford, 1995), urges readers to set aside internal responses so they can be free to listen. S. R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 236–60, made famous the aphorism “seek first to understand, then to be understood” in order to introduce skills of empathic listening.
12. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 129.
13. J. A. Doyle, The Male Experience (Dubuque, Ia.: W. C. Brown, 1989); J. T. Wood, Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1994), cited in D. J. A. Clines, “Ecce Vir, or Gendering the Son of Man,” in Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium (JSOTSup 266; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 352–75.
14. S. Fowl, “Learning to Narrate Our Lives in Christ,” in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, ed. C. Seitz and K. Greene-McCreight (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 351.
15. D. S. Cunningham, Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology (Notre Dame and London: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 253.
16. St. Romanos, Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist—On the Person of Christ, trans. M. Carpenter (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1970), 169–70; cited in J. R. Jeter Jr., “The Development of Poetic Preaching: A Slice of History,” Homiletic 15/2 (Winter 1990): 8.
17. P. Gomes, “The Best Sermon of the Millennium,” Pulpit Digest 81/1 (Jan.–March 2000): 143–46.
18. F. Craddock, “Enduring the Small Stuff (Hebrews 12:1–2),” in Ten Great Preachers: Messages and Interviews, ed. B. Turpie (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 42–50.
1. J. Goldingay, “The Arrangement of Sayings in Proverbs 10–15,” JSOT 61 (1994): 75–83.
2. The occurrences of “wise son” in 10:1; 13:1; 15:20 may mark the beginning, middle, and end of the contrasting proverbs in chs. 10–15 (Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 198–99).
3. The niv translates the more idiomatic “fruit of his lips,” as in 12:14: “From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things.” Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 198–215, believes that the repetition of similar first lines in 12:14 and 13:2 frames a section. It is not clear why this repetition should take priority over others.
4. J. Emerton, “The Meaning of Proverbs 13:2,” JTS 35 (1984): 91–95.
5. McKane, Proverbs, 460.
6. R. J. Clifford, “Proverbs as a Source for Wisdom of Solomon,” in Treasures of Wisdom: Studies in Ben Sira and the Book of Wisdom, Festschrift M. Gilbert, ed. N. Calduch-Benages and J. Vermeylen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999), 255–63. Clifford lists five themes from the book of Proverbs that influenced the Wisdom of Solomon: (1) Righteous person as the locus where divine action becomes visible, (2) God as a father who teaches his son by a process involving correction, (3) The wise king, (4) Life and death as more-than biological realities, (5) The world protects the righteous and punishes the wicked.
7. I. W. Provan, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 52.
8. The NRSV has “wealth hastily gotten.” Clifford, Proverbs, 135–36, emends to read “hastily acquired,” in comparison to 20:21 and 28:22, sayings that deal with hastily acquired wealth and its loss. So also Murphy, Proverbs, 93–94.
9. After Garrett, Proverbs, 137, who sees an inclusio here.
10. Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 218–19, believes that similarities with 14:27 mark another section, with 13:14–19 set off as a subsection.
11. Cf. Ps. 37:25–29; 49:10.
12. This association of discipline with corporal punishment is the first of a few occurrences (cf. 22:15; 23:13–14; cf. 29:15). Ancient Near Eastern texts testify to its use in the education of young men, not children, so it may be that correction and beating were seen as synonymous, esp. when the teaching encountered resistance. Still, we cannot be sure that this was true in Israel, since there are other sayings that associate the word “discipline” with teaching, not with a rod. We then should put the emphasis on the goal of correction, not the means of physical punishment. Moreover, such discipline is to be enacted as a sign of parental love, for Yahweh disciplines (teaches and corrects) like a loving father (3:12; cf. 12:1). For other proverbs about the rod and adult folly, see 10:13; 22:8; 26:3.
13. In my opinion, the best are by Hubbard and Farmer. Kidner’s introduction also takes this approach; see the bibliography. See also Longman, 117–55, for guidance in doing topical study.
14. J. C. Haughey, Virtue and Affluence: The Challenge of Wealth (Kansas City: Sheed Ward, 1997), 19.
15. This discussion is inspired by T. J. Gorringe, The Education of Desire: Toward a Theology of the Senses (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2001), 91–94.
16. E. Fromm, The Art of Loving (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), 91; quoted in Gorringe, The Education of Desire, 93.
17. “In the Christian tradition it is above all the eucharist which exists to do this disciplinary and educative work. . . . It has to be both affirmative of the physical body, and of the earth, and for that very reason hostile to all forms of consumerism” (Gorringe, The Education of Desire, 104).
18. S. Fowl, “The Ethics of Interpretation or What’s Left Over After the Elimination of Meaning,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, ed. D. J. A. Clines, S. E. Fowl, S. E. Porter (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 379–98.
19. Streetwise, 8/22 (May 30–June 5, 2000).
20. Haughey, Virtue and Affluence, 85–87.
1. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 100–101, although it is not apparent that the verses that follow are written in the form of an instruction as he claims.
2. After Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 223–26; see also Scherer, Das Weise Wort und Seine Wirkung, 143–58, who, following different key words, divides this way: vv. 1–2, 3–9 (“fool”), 10–14 (Heb. leb, “heart”), 15–18 (“simple” and “prudent”), 19–22 (“evil”), 23–25, 26–27, 28–35. Following the words “way” and “good” one can also divide: vv. 1–7, 8–13, 14–18, 19–22, 23–25, 26–27, 28–35. No single outline encompasses all of the catchwords; see comments at 14:14.
3. Garrett, Proverbs, 140.
4. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 138, takes this as a shift from cosmic to human wisdom, the wise woman emulating the work of wisdom, perhaps “building a house” through childbearing.
5. Murphy, Proverbs, 103.
6. Garrett, Proverbs, 142–43, sets in pairs vv. 8/15, 9/14, 10/13, 11/12 around the theme that life is deceptive and outward joy can end in grief. See comments on 14:14 for a different chiastic structure in 14:14–22.
7. Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung, 223.
8. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 140.
9. Ross, “Proverbs,” 985.
11. Clifford, Proverbs, 142, reads “his deeds” on the basis of Hos. 12:2; so also Murphy, Proverbs, 102. If one reads the MT as it is vocalized, “from on it” translates it in parallel with “ways” in the first line.
12. Three uses of the word “good” join together two mirror structures:
v. 14 The good have their fill of their deeds
v. 15 Prudent give thought to their steps
v. 16 Fools, arrogant and restless
v. 17 Foolish, quick tempered and crafty
v. 18 Prudent crowned with knowledge
v. 19 The good will have evil ones bow
v. 20 Poor shunned by neighbors
v. 21 Whoever despises neighbor sins
v. 22 The good find love and faithfulness
13. Murphy, Proverbs, 102.
14. Kidner, Proverbs, 110.
15. It is not clear whether the reference to one’s children should be read in the context of the book of Proverbs only; some reference to the “thousandth generation” may be intended. Clifford, Proverbs, 147, finds two meanings: one that God rewards a righteous person’s family over generations (Ex. 20:6; Deut. 5:9), another that the parents pass on their own faith and devotion as a legacy.
16. R. E. Clements translates “envy” (qinʾah) as “bad feelings”: “A calm disposition gives life to the body, but bad feelings make the body ill” (Wisdom in Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992], 79).
17. Garrett, Proverbs, 147.
18. Kidner, Proverbs, 111, allowing that the Israelites did not have “too advanced a doctrine of death,” recognized that Job shows occasional glimpses of hope and that the righteous of the Psalms commit themselves to God in death (Ps. 31:15 after Delitzsch).
19. Clifford, Proverbs, 142, reads with the Heb. “death,” citing the Dead Sea scroll 4QProvb in support. For arguments against reading with the LXX, see Heim, Like Grapes of God Set in Silver, 189–91.
20. Throughout the ancient Near East, kings sought wisdom from the gods to rule rightly and successfully. See L. Kalugila, The Wise King: Studies in Royal Wisdom as Divine Revelation in the Old Testament and Its Environment (CBOT 15; Lund: Liber Läromedel/Gleerup, 1980).
21. There do not seem to be other occurrences in the book, but the refuge is a key image in Psalms, usually in the context of enemies (Ps. 46:2; 61:4; 62:8).
22. Clements has proposed that “fear of the LORD” was first associated with the worship of Israel but was later extended to have a wider and more universal appeal (Wisdom in Theology, 58–64).
23. B. Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cambridge/Boston: Cowley Publications, 1993), 59.
24. Zoltán Kodály, Psalmus Hungaricus, in Program Notes (Grant Park Festival; June 18, 2000).
25. R. Sider, ed., Cry Justice: The Bible on Hunger and Poverty (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; New York: Paulist Press, 1980).
1. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 106, sees two halves in 15:5–19 and 20–33, the second half resembling the instructions of chs. 1–9. Garrett, Proverbs, sees two corresponding sections in 15:1–17 and 15:18–16:8 based on the verbal links between 15:1 and 18 (“wrath,” ḥemah, and “anger,” ʾap) and the similarity of proverbs on true wealth (15:17 and 16:8). Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 192–205, divides at 15:18–19 but sees a number of smaller clusters throughout the ch. (vv. 1–4, 5–12, 13–18, 19–23, 24–27, 28–33).
2. The emendation of the Heb. for “commends” (NIV) to “drips” (NRSV) in order to create a better parallel with “pours out” is unnecessary. The parallelism of Proverbs often uses difference and unusual pairings to communicate meaning. A similar contrast of key terms appears in 15:14.
3. The Instruction of Amenemope, in Lichtheim, AEL (XVII:10), 156. The phrase “cheats with his finger” refers to a dishonest scribe.
4. Clifford, Proverbs, 149–51, contrasts possessions safe in the house with the harvest in the field that was not gathered: “In the house of the righteous are great possessions, but the harvest of the wicked is in peril.”
5. “Stern discipline” uses the word for evil or trouble (raʿ ); it is not clear whether the discipline will lead the wanderer from death or bring it. The question is whether to translate v. 10a as a nonverbal clause, “discipline is hard” (Clifford, Proverbs, 149; “bad in the eyes of,” cf. 1 Sam. 29:7) or as an adjective, “severe punishment” (Whybray, Proverbs, 228); the latter is more likely.
6. The NIV note records the Heb. terms used here. To the Israelites, Sheol and Abaddon were synonyms for the place of the dead (cf. Job 26:6). Abaddon comes from the Heb. word for destruction. Both Sheol and Abaddon are (lit.) “before the LORD,” leading the translators to add “lie open” for clarity (cf. TNK, “lie exposed”).
7. With this pair, the “better than” sayings begin to appear more frequently (12:9; 15:16–17; 16:8, 19, 32; 17:1; 19:1; 21:9, 19; 25:7, 24; 27:5, 10; 28:6). I count only those proverbs that begin with ṭob (“better”) in the first line and the comparative min (“than”) in the second. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 153, includes 8:11 and 19, where wisdom is better than wealth. See T. Perry, Wisdom Literature and the Structure of Proverbs (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1993), for the fourfold structure of comparisons.
8. Note the similar pairing in The Instruction of Amenemope, AEL ch. 6 (IX, 5), 152: “Better is poverty in the hand of the god, Than wealth in the storehouse; Better is bread with a happy heart, Than wealth with vexation.”
9. Or, as Clifford, Proverbs, 153, puts it, “a meal becomes a feast because of the joyous fellowship of the guests rather than because of the food.”
10. McKane, Proverbs, 484; Whybray, Proverbs, 231.
11. See the similar advice from The Instruction of Amenemope, in Lichtheim, AEL (V, 10–15), 150: “Don’t start a quarrel with a hot-mouthed man, Nor needle him with words. Pause before a foe, bend before an attacker, Sleep (on it) before speaking. A storm that bursts like fire in straw, Such is the heated man in his hour.”
12. The sluggard appears in 6:6, 9; 10:26; 13:4; 15:19; 19:24; 20:4; 21:25; 22:13; 24:30; 26:13–14, 16.
13. This repetition of the words “wise,” “foolish,” “joy,” “father,” and “mother” may mark the beginning of the end of the contrasting proverbs. The theme of laziness in 15:19 also appears in 10:4–5.
14. Clifford, Proverbs, 154, cites Deut. 28:43 as evidence that up and down can be symbolic of success and failure. Life and death in Proverbs take on what Clifford calls “metaphorical dimensions.” Life implies blessing, enrichment, long life, good relations, reputation, security, and wealth. Death implies curse, deprivation, loss, short life, bad reputation, insecurity, and poverty. See also R. J. Clifford, “Proverbs as a Source for Wisdom of Solomon,” in Treasures of Wisdom: Studies in Ben Sira and the Book of Wisdom, Festschrift M. Gilbert, ed. N. Calduch-Benages and J. Vermeylen (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1999), 255–63.
15. The example was common throughout the ancient Near East. See The Instruction of Amenemope, in Lichtheim, AEL (VII: 11), 151: “Do not move the markers on the borders of fields, Nor shift the position of the measuring-cord. Do not be greedy for a cubit of land, Nor encroach on the boundaries of a widow.”
16. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 152, observes that the heart, ears, eyes, mouth, and lips were all considered “organs of understanding” in Israel’s oral culture.
17. The first line reads, “The fear of the LORD, instruction of wisdom,” leaving the translators somewhat puzzled as the NIV footnote indicates. Something like “instruction in wisdom” (NRSV) or “school of wisdom” (JB) renders it well. The LXX has “wisdom and instruction.”
18. Whybray, Proverbs, 225.
19. It is no surprise, then, that self-help books with titles like Coping with Difficult People are popular (R. M. Branson, Coping with Difficult People in Business and in Life [New York: Ballantine, 1981]).
20. Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.27, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, quoted in E. Achtemeier, Preaching Hard Texts of the Old Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998), 5.
21. N. Deenen, “Eva Jefferson Patterson,” Cross Currents (Spring 2000), 10–15.
22. P. Tournier, The Seasons of Life, trans. J. S. Gilmour (Atlanta: John Knox, 1976), 33.
23. Liner notes, M. Torke, Book of Proverbs/Four Proverbs (London: Decca Records, 1994, 1999).
1. R. N. Whybray, “Yahweh Sayings and their Contexts in Proverbs 10:1–22:16,” in La sagesse de l’Ancien Testament, ed. M. Gilbert, 2d ed. (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1990), 153–65. Whybray extends this observation to other examples of Yahweh sayings: 12:2–3; 14:1–2; 15:16–17; 18:10–11. He also believes that an older, secular wisdom is reinterpreted by the Yahweh sayings, but one need not accept the historical argument to appreciate this literary feature.
2. See Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 208–9, who divides into clusters: vv. 1–8, 9–11, 12–15, 16–30.
3. We are taking heart and tongue here as source and conduit, but it is possible that they constitute a merism for all of human action (Clifford, Proverbs, 157).
4. The Instruction of Amenemope, AEL (XVIII:16–17), 157: “The words men say are one thing, The deeds of the god are another.” Murphy, Proverbs, 120, 124–25, claims the ancients saw the problem but refrained from trying to resolve it.
5. Pure olive oil was to be used for the lamps in the tabernacle (Ex. 27:20; 30:7–8; Lev. 24:2).
6. Hubbard, Proverbs, 235, makes it clear that the word either denotes “for his purpose” from the word to exert oneself (Eccl. 1:13; 3:10; 5:19) or “with its answer” from the more common verb (Prov. 1:28; 15:28). In the order of creation, each action receives its appropriate response or answer. Yet Yahweh responds also; if there is any overlap, it would be that just as God “answers” evil with judgment, so the creation has its own “answers” built in.
7. Kidner, Proverbs, 118.
8. The reader might ask whose love and faithfulness atone for sin. The niv translation reflects the parallel in Heb.; “through love and faithfulness” and “through fear of the LORD,” suggesting that human faithfulness is in view. Yet it is not clear that the same subject is meant for both lines of the proverb. It could be argued that, following Yahweh’s hatred of pride in 16:5, his love and faithfulness are meant here (cf. Ps. 25:10).
9. Murphy, Proverbs, 121, looks to 19:21; 20:24; and Jer. 10:23 and concludes that the proverb affirms human helplessness before God. While I do not disagree, it seems to me that the picture of these proverbs is more optimistic about the real action of those who walk in God’s “way.”
10. The word for “oracle” (qesem) is unusual in this context; it typically refers to practices of divination that were outlawed (Num. 23:23; Deut. 18:10–14; 1 Sam. 15:23; Ezek. 21:21). Yet Balaam spoke only the oracle message given from God (Num. 22:18, 35, 38), and a similar sort of inspiration is in view here. Whether we translate “inspired judgments” or “oracle,” the implied truth is clear: Yahweh, who works out everything for his own purpose (Prov. 16:4), can also ensure that justice is brought about through his representative, the king.
11. Two possible meanings for the word “brightens” (lit. “in the light of a king’s face”), “smile” and “show favor” may overlap, even as we would say, one’s “face lit up.” So Job said “When I smiled at them they did not turn aside, nor did they cause my shining face to fall” (Job 29:24). M. I. Gruber, Aspects of Nonverbal Communication in the Ancient Near East, Studia Pohl, 12/II (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 557–58.
12. Whybray, Proverbs, 246, believes that these verses form a mini-instruction, similar to those found in chs. 1–9.
13. Whybray, “Yahweh Sayings,” 164, believes this Yahweh saying interprets 16:16–19.
14. Murphy, Proverbs, 117.
15. Clifford, Proverbs, 161, applies Occam’s razor, choosing the ordinary meaning of musar (“discipline”) as the simplest solution: “As long as perverse folly is the discipline of fools, they will remain fools and eventually bring retribution on their heads.”
16. Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 216.
17. Hubbard, Proverbs, 238, takes Acts 1:21–26 as illustrating the proverb. The human cast chose Matthias, but the story goes on to show that God chose Paul. The sailors in Jonah 1:7 cast lots to find the source of the trouble and discern God’s will. In Prov. 18:18 the lot makes decisions that settle disputes and keeps opponents apart.
18. K. Snodgrass, Between Two Truths: Living with Biblical Tensions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).
19. Whybray, Proverbs, 240.
20. Ross, “Proverbs,” 1,002–3.
21. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 159, finds here an allusion to the self-naming speech of Yahweh before Moses, set in the story of Israel’s sin with the golden calf.
22. See Deut. 18 and 1 Sam. 8 for the limits on kingly authority.
23. Hubbard, Proverbs, 232–53, treats this from the viewpoint of believers’ response to dual authority, illustrated by Israel’s exile in Babylon, Daniel’s service in the king’s court, and Jesus’ words about giving only what Caesar owns to Caesar (Matt. 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26).
24. G. Wolfe, Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 311–12.
25. N. Shawchuck and R. Hauser, Leading the Congregation: Caring for Yourself While Serving the People (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 116.
1. The distribution of “fool” sayings does not indicate any overarching structure, although Heim sets off 17:10–16 and 17:21–25 on this basis (17:1–9, 10–16, 17–20, 21–25, 26–28); see his Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 232–34. See also Scherer, Das Weise Wort und Seine Wirkung, 251–52, who divides 17:2–3, 4–9, 10–13, 14–15, 16–22, and 17:23–18:8.
2. Cf. 28:21, where the crust of bread is a sign of poverty (R. N. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990], 14–15).
3. Kidner, Proverbs, 122, sees ironic play on the šalom offering in the phrase “sacrifices of strife”(Deut. 12:11, 21; 1 Sam. 20:6; see also 1 Sam. 1:3–7).
4. T. P. McCreesh, Biblical Sound and Sense: Poetic Sound Patterns in Proverbs 10–29 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 109–12.
5. Clifford, Proverbs, finds the image of refining in Ps. 26:2; 66:10; Jer. 9:6; esp. Zech. 13:9.
6. Kidner, Proverbs, 123.
7. Whybray, Poverty and Wealth, 41–42. Whybray believes that these proverbs do not see poverty as something that should be abolished, but they do tell the rich to remember that the poor are not theirs to be exploited; the poor belong to God.
8. N. M. Waldman, “A Note on Excessive Speech and Falsehood,” JQR 67 (1976): 142–45. The phrase śepat yeter has some connotation of “arrogant overbearing speech,” with the overtone of “false speech.” By analogy, see Ps. 31:19; Prov. 26:28.
9. Murphy, Proverbs, 126–27; Scott, Proverbs, 108.
10. So also Ahikar 6.83, “A blow for a serving-boy, a rebuke for a slave-girl, and for all your servants, discipline!” J. Lindenberger, “Ahiqar: A New Translation and Introduction,” Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 2:498; ANET, 428.
11. T. R. Schneider, The Sharpening of Wisdom: Old Testament Proverbs in Translation (Pretoria: Old Testament Society of South Africa, 1992), 143; GKC, 113cc, 152g. The emendation of beʾiš to beyeʾušo or beyeʾušah (“in her desperation”) is not attested in the versions and is not convincing; S. E. Loewenstamm, “Remarks on Proverbs 17:2 and 20:27,” VT 37 (1987): 221–24.
12. Scott, Proverbs, 111; Clifford, Proverbs, 106.
13. On pledges, see 6:1; 11:15; 17:18; 20:16; 22:26; 27:13. See also the similar warning in Sir. 19:15–16, 20: “Do not forget the kindness of guarantor, for he has given his life for you. A sinner wastes the property of his guarantor, and the ungrateful person abandons his rescuer. . . . Assist your neighbor to the best of your ability, but be careful not to fall yourself.”
14. A. Scherer, “Is the Selfish Man Wise? Considerations of Context in Proverbs 10:1–22:16 with Special Regard to Surety, Bribery and Friendship,” JSOT 76 (1997): 63.
15. Garrett, Proverbs, 161, notes the reverse of v. 9, from one who “seeks love” to one who “seeks breakup,” translating šeber as “breakup” instead of “destruction.”
16. Clifford, Proverbs, 163.
17. B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World’s Earliest Proverb Collections, 2 vols. (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1997), 1:32 (1.157).
18. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 111.
19. D. Gill, Being Good: Building Moral Character (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000), 43–61. Gill recommends commitment to a community and its mutual work of building character.
20. R. and L. Williams, “Letter That I Wrote,” from Devil of a Dream (Sugar Hill Records, 1998).
1. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 1:296, divides using the key word “brother” in vv. 9, 19, 24; vv. 1–9 on perverse speech; vv. 10–19 on strengths that come to the wise; vv. 20–24 on speech and friends.
2. The LXX reads prophaseis (“pretexts”), as in Judg. 14:4, yielding “the estranged person seeks pretexts” (Clifford, Proverbs, 169), or “a schismatic person seeks an opportunity for a quarrel” (Garrett, Proverbs, 164). The Heb. text makes good sense and can be left as it stands.
3. Some, however, take the second line as apposition to the deep waters; “words express a person’s thoughts, bringing them to the surface” (cf. 20:5) (Clifford, Proverbs, 170). Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 600, argues that nowhere in Proverbs do humans have their own inner resources of wisdom, so the proverb highlights a “contrast between human evasiveness and wisdom’s sparkling clarity.”
4. See 20:5, where “deep waters” are hidden from view; wisdom is also deep and hidden (Job 12:2; Eccl. 7:24); and the “deep lip” is a metaphor for unintelligible speech (Isa. 33:19; Ezek. 3:5–6). The deep pit of illicit sex (Prov. 22:14; 23:27) also hides its deadly effects.
5. W. McKane, “Functions of Language and Objectives of Discourse According to Proverbs 10–30,” in La sagesse de l’Ancien Testament, ed. M. Gilbert, 2d ed. (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1990), 185. See also idem, Proverbs, 374–75.
6. Clifford, Proverbs, 171, says it well: “Honor is given, not taken.” He cites Ps. 132:1, noting the emphasis falls not only on attitude but on action.
7. Is there a judicial context here? Murphy, Proverbs, 136, says no, but one could argue that the general principle certainly applies to the judgments mentioned in 18:17–19.
8. R. E. Clements, Wisdom in Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 80, suggests that unlike physical illness, which is often temporary, “deep emotional hurt may be much more lasting and injurious in its effects.” The implication is clear that inner hurt is worse than physical sickness and “far more difficult to heal.”
9. Clifford, Proverbs, 173, looks to grammar to conclude that the feminine suffix “it” refers to life and death as a distributive. The result, then, is you eat what you choose, either life or death (cf. Deut. 30:15–20). J. G. Williams, Those Who Ponder Proverbs: Aphoristic Thinking and Biblical Literature (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1981), 45–46, sees the principle of retributive justice at work.
10. D. C. Snell, “Notes on Love and Death in Proverbs,” in Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, ed. J. H. Marks and R. M. Good (Guilford, Conn.: Four Quarters, 1987), 165–68. Only two verses in Proverbs mention love and death, 8:36 (one after 8:35) and 18:21 (one before 18:22). Therefore, the two pairs bear an even greater similarity.
11. R. E. Murphy, “The Faces of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs,” in Mélanges biblilques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, ed. A. Caquot and M. Delcor (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981), 337–45.
12. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs, 116–17.
13. The first line of the proverb is ambiguous and difficult to translate. “May come to ruin” can be translated “may keep one company,” yielding: “Some friends play at friendship” (NRSV).
14. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981).
15. Q. J. Schultze, Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000).
16. K. Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1969); and “Definition of Man,” in Language As Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1966), 15: “To the extent that a social structure becomes differentiated, with privileges to some that are denied to others, there are the conditions for a kind of ‘built in’ pride. King and peasant are ‘mysteries’ to each other. Those ‘Up’ are guilty of not being ‘Down,’ those ‘Down’ are certainly guilty of not being ‘Up.’ ”
17. H. J. M. Nouwen, Letters to Marc About Jesus (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 39–50.
18. The connection between spirit and body links the proverbs that mention the crushed spirit (15:13; 17:22; 18:14). A cheerful heart does good, but heartache crushes the spirit (15:13), and a crushed spirit dries the bones (17:22). That connection with the heart may lie in the background of 18:14 as well, for the heart shows up in 18:15 (see also 12:25). Perhaps we can say the spirit is that which enlivens a person; when it leaves or when it is bitter or crushed, its life-charging capacities are negated.
19. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 173.
20. M. S. Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). Peck claims that groups typically move through the four stages of pseudo-community, chaos, emptiness, community.
21. S. Terkel, American Dreams: Lost and Found (New York: Ballantine, 1981), 221–33, quoted in R. Anderson and V. Ross, Questions of Communication, 3d ed. (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 246–47.
22. Nouwen, Letters to Marc About Jesus, 42–43.
23. B. Schwartz, “A New Wake-up Call,” in In Trust (January, 2000), 29–30. Schwartz reviewed a book by D. G. Myers entitled, The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty, and found the argument convincing, even though the book left him wondering why people are so materialistic. “Could it be because Americans have learned that they can’t count on anyone but themselves to provide things like health care and education for their families? . . . It seems to me that there is a causal relationship between the policies that have made us affluent and our growing unhappiness. In our pursuit of wealth, we have removed constraints on business and allowed the social safety net to erode. The ideology of the free market is one of individualism, materialism, and freedom from constraint, and the ideology infects everything it touches.”
24. S. Hauerwas with L. Yordy, “Captured in Time: Friendship and Aging,” in A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2000), 173–87. Much of the discussion here is drawn from this article.
25. “Friendship excels everything . . . for friendship is a path that leads very close to the perfection which consists of the enjoyment and knowledge of God, such that [one] who is a friend of man is made into a friend of God, according to what the Savior said in the Gospel: ‘Now I will not call you servants but my friends’ [John 15:15].” Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, trans. Mark F. Williams (Scranton, Penn.: Univ. of Scranton Press, 1994), quoted in Hauerwas with Yordy, “Captured in Time,” 180.
26. Hauerwas with Yordy, “Captured in Time,” 185.
27. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, quoted in Hauerwas with Yordy, “Captured in Time,” 186.
1. Garrett, Proverbs, 169–71, marks 18:22–19:14 as a section based on the inclusio of proverbs about the good wife.
2. A chiastic structure takes shape in vv. 15–24 based on key words and themes: laziness (vv. 15, 24), life (vv. 16, 23), poor (vv. 17, 22), discipline (vv. 18, 20–21).
3. Clifford, Proverbs, 174–75, emends the second line to read “than one walking on a crooked way though he is rich” (on the basis of 28:6), but Proverbs has a number of verses that are nearly identical but for one variation (cf. 19:5, 9). Murphy, Proverbs, 141, reads with Heb. text and notes that the LXX does not have the verse.
4. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:310–11, takes nepeš as “life,” not desire.
5. Cf. Sir. 15:11, “Do not say, ‘It was the Lord’s doing that I fell away’; for he does not do what he hates.”
6. Proverbs tends to speak of results of poverty, not its causes. While laziness is one sure cause of poverty, the proverbs on the topic often focus on response and generally recommend kindness to the poor. Murphy, “Excursus on Wealth and Poverty,” in Proverbs, 260–64.
7. The Heb. reads something like “pursuing-words-not-these.” The NIV follows Scott, Proverbs, 115, in relating the extra line to the saying, but Scott also emends to read, “When he follows them they speak angrily to him.” Most commentators take the line to be corrupt, perhaps a leftover half of another saying. The LXX includes another couplet, which creates a very different proverb: “Everyone who hates his poor brother shall also be far from friendship. Good understanding will draw near to them that know it, and a sensible man will find it. He that does much harm perfects mischief; and he that used provoking words shall not escape.”
8. Whybray, Proverbs, 278, notes that Zimri, who assassinated the king and came to power, was called a servant (ʿebed, 1 Kings 16:1–13; cf. 2 Kings 9:31).
9. Garrett, Proverbs, 170.
10. Clifford, Proverbs, 177.
11. The NRSV translates, “while there is hope.” The difference is not great, the one stressing urgency, the other stressing motivation.
12. The NIV rightly captures the sense rendered by Scott, Proverbs, 116, “And do not indulge him to his own destruction.” To fail to discipline is to hate one’s son; to instruct is to love (13:24). Murphy and TNK put it more strongly, urging fathers to keep their anger in check, as does Clifford, Proverbs, 175, “Do not be intent on killing him.”
13. Two other proverbs begin with the same Heb. word (taʹawah): 11:23 (“desire”) and 21:25 (“craving”).
14. Scherer, Das Weise Wort und Seine Wirkung, 277, sees three kinds of sayings or themes (Schwerpunkte): didactic sayings, Yahweh sayings, and economic sayings.
15. An excellent introduction to Coles’s life and work can be found in P. Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 87–118.
16. Ibid., 103.
17. R. Coles, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 125–26.
18. H. J. M. Nouwen, ¡Gracias! A Latin American Journal (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 147, 188.
1. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 114–17, takes 20:20–21:4 as a thematic group containing seven Yahweh sayings, all but one arranged in triads, mixed together with royal proverbs.
2. Scherer, Das Weise Wort und Seine Wirkung, 286–93, takes 19:2–20:21 and 20:22–22:3 as major sections, dividing 19:28–20:1; 20:2–12, 13–19, 20–21, 22–24, 25–30 as subsections. Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 267–87, parcels 19:25–20:4; 20:5–13; 20:14–19; 20:20–21:4.
3. L. Kalugila, The Wise King: Studies in Royal Wisdom As Divine Revelation in the Old Testament and Its Environment (Uppsala: CWK Gleerup, 1980), 127. Wisdom as a royal prerogative is a prevalent motif in ancient Near Eastern texts, but the Old Testament affirms that the only source of such wisdom is Yahweh.
4. T. R. Schneider, The Sharpening of Wisdom: Old Testament Proverbs in Translation (Pretoria: Old Testament Society of South Africa, 1992), 200, believes the proverb is a riddle like 10:26 and 11:22, but the brain teaser comes in reading the proverb in its cluster, not in the proverb itself.
5. See TNK, Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 186, and Clifford, Proverbs, 180, 183, for translations that stress deception. Clifford translates (cf. Gen. 42:7; 1 Kings 14:5, 6): “In his actions even a boy can playact, though his deed be blameless and right.”
6. For this reason Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 272–73, puts the proverb with 20:5–13.
7. Murphy, Proverbs, 152, thinks that a boast after a deal “is not a very convincing sign of victory!”
8. A. Scherer, “Is the Selfish Man Wise?: Considerations of Context in Proverbs 10:1–22:16 with Special Regard to Surety, Bribery, and Friendship,” JSOT 76 (1997): 64, finds an “ironical connotation” that the guarantor is so foolish that the loss of the garment doesn’t trouble him. Read in its literary context on property (20:12–21), this saying describes a man who uses wisdom in judging which business practices are “insecure or even dubious.”
9. The word for “avoid” echoes the sound and spelling of “security” and “sweet” (20:16–17, root ʿrb). Although it may be best to avoid unwise pledges and the sweetness of false gain, the wordplay may be more a display of wit than guidance for reading.
10. Clifford, Proverbs, 185, translates “greedily guarded” after an Arabic cognate to keep the ketib (text as written), while the LXX follows the qere (marginal emendation). Certainly the idea of greed makes more sense, but both options leave much to the imagination. How does one gain an inheritance greedily, or hurriedly for that matter?
11. Whybray, Proverbs, 298, and The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 115, marks off 20:20–21:4, counting seven Yahweh proverbs in fifteen verses, all but 20:27 set in groups of three.
12. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 187, notes that this verse does not recommend pacifism, since divine justice is typically carried out by human authorities (Ps. 72; Rom. 13:1–7).
13. Scott, Murphy, and TNK take the human breath as the lamp; the NRSV also, calling it spirit. Clifford, Proverbs, 186, suggests that human “lifebreath,” the “gift of God,” courses throughout the body as a claim; all of its regions belong to him and are under his scrutiny.
14. “Spirit” (nišmat, cf. Job 26:4) is the “breath of life” in Gen. 2:7 and 7:22; the “breath of the LORD” in Isa. 30:33 and Job 32:8. “Inmost being” (ḥadre—beṭen, the inner chambers of belly) appears in 18:8; 20:27; 20:30; 26:22 (cf. “chambers of death,” 7:27; “chambers of riches,” 24:4).
15. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 188, notes that lamps and breath both give life in the Bible, and so the metaphor can point to both God’s knowledge of the human and human self-knowledge as a gift of God, not simply one or the other.
16. S. E. Loewenstamm, “Remarks on Proverbs 17:12 and 20:27,” VT 37 (April, 1984): 221–24. Lowenstamm proposes to read “lamp” as a participle of nir (“to break up, to plow”). The word “search” can also mean to dig (cf. Job 3:20), so he translates, “God ploughs and examines the soul of man, searches all the inmost chambers.”
17. Clifford, Proverbs, 181: “Blows and wounds come upon the wicked.” Von Soden proposes “insult” for “cleanse” and “scar” for “beatings,” interpreting the proverb to mean that malice leaves a scar on the inner character, but the proposal requires some emendation based on Aramaic (see W. von Soden, “Kränung, nicht Schläge in Sprüche 20:30,” ZAW 102 [1990]: 120–21).
18. Other doublets appear on “honor” and “glory” (20:3, 29) and on “love and faithfulness” (20:6, 28).
19. M. J. Dawn and E. Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call, ed. P. Santucci (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 132–37.
20. P. T. Chattaway, “The Self-Deception of Mr. Death,” Books and Culture (January/February 2000), 5.
1. Whybray, Composition, 117–18. Whybray calls 21:1 and 21:31 a frame, but Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 601, puts 21:30–31 in a frame with 22:16. It may be the case that 21:30–31 works as a hinge that links the chs. and their clusters.
2. These proverbs do not fit neatly into any pattern. Scherer, Das Weise Wort und Seine Wirkung, 302–33, divides larger sections 20:22–21:3; 21:4–29; 21:30–22:16. The smaller clusters as identified by Scherer are: vv. 1–3, 4–12, 13–16, 17–21, 22–24, 25–29, 30–31. Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 282–304, places vv. 1–4 in a larger section 20:20–21:4; the rest of the ch. is divided vv. 5–8, 9–19, 20–29, 30–31.
3. Garrett, Proverbs, 179, adds that this divine guidance does not rule out the need for counselors (cf. 20:18).
4. Whybray, Proverbs, 307, links 21:4 with 6:17.
5. Murphy, Proverbs, 157–59, translates “the tillage of the wicked is sinful.” But 24:20 does name a “lamp of the wicked” that is snuffed out. Clifford, Proverbs, 189, translates “the lamp of the wicked will fail,” drawing a contrast with the lamp that does not go out in 31:18.
6. So TNK: “The way of a man is tortuous and strange.”
7. Scott, Proverbs, 125, believes the corner of the roof is a small room or shelter used for guests (2 Kings 4:10).
8. Most translations and commentators agree. Clifford, Proverbs, 191, observes that the righteous never punish the wicked in Proverbs, only God does (13:6; 19:3). However, Garrett, Proverbs, 181, argues that ṣaddiq is always used of humans in Proverbs and notes the parallel use of skl in vv. 11 and 12. Therefore he translates, “A righteous man observes the house of the wicked, how wickedness brings it to ruin,” but he has to emend “ruin of the wicked” to do so.
9. Persons becoming ransom for others appears in Isa. 43:3–4; Jesus’ saying on ransom in Mark 10:45 reverses the expectation that the righteous will not suffer.
10. Clifford, Proverbs, 192, takes it as fine wine after 1 Chron. 27:27. The same ambiguity of terms shows up as “vineyard of wine” (NASB) or a “pleasant vineyard” (NRSV) in Isa. 27:2. The decision to emphasize edible goods may have been influenced by the “wine and oil” of Prov. 21:17.
11. Whybray, Proverbs, 313.
12. “Prosperity” is a variation from the Heb. text that repeats “righteousness” (see the NIV footnote). The LXX does not read “righteousness,” and a number of commentators (McKane, Scott, Murphy, Clifford) omit it altogether. Garrett, Proverbs, 183, maintains it, taking it as an abbreviated repetition of “righteousness and love” from the first line, meaning that those who seek those virtues will find them.
13. See the similar stories of Eccl. 9:13–16 and Ahiqar, whose wisdom in answering an enemy’s riddle saved the city from destruction.
14. Some commentators (e.g., Murphy, Proverbs, 157) hold that the subject of the first line need not be the sluggard of 21:25 but anyone whose appetite takes control. Clifford, Proverbs, 193, keeps the two proverbs independent to preserve the integrity of each, yet adds a word about appetite: “What keeps normal people alive kills sluggards, for they cannot lift their hands to their mouths to feed themselves (cf. 19:24).”
15. Variations on the reading include: “but an accurate one will testify again” (Clifford); “but one who listens will have the last word” (Murphy); “but the one who really heard will testify with success” (TNK); “but a good listener will testify successfully” (NRSV).
16. D. A. Garrett, following Dahood, replaces “speak” with “drive out,” translating “and whoever listens to him will be driven out forever” (“Votive Prostitution Again: A Comparison of Proverbs 7:13–14 and 21:28–29,” JBL [1990]: 681–82).
17. Garrett, ibid., takes this to be the equivalent of a “bold-faced lie.”
18. “Can succeed” is (lit.) “before” (neged) Yahweh, which the TNK translates: “No wisdom, no understanding, no advice is worth anything before Yahweh” (italics added).
19. Another clue may come from the use of channeled waters in 21:1 and the reverse in 5:16, waters flowing loose and undirected in the street, a sign of folly and refusal to learn. If the symbols are used consistently, channeled water is purposeful water, while water spilled in the streets is water put to no purpose at all but wasted.
20. In the song of Moses, the word is used four times as Yahweh’s son Israel angers him with idols (Deut. 32:16, 19, 21, 27). In the song, Moses also chastises Israel for rejecting wisdom and trusting in their own battle strength (Deut. 32:28–30; cf. Prov. 21:30–31).
21. Interestingly, the word for “spirits of the dead” (repaʿim) is used to describe the ways of the woman in 2:18 and 9:18, and then only once again in 21:16: “A man who strays from the path of understanding comes to rest in the company of the dead.”
22. D. Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
23. Ibid., 41.
24. Ibid., 272.
25. P. Gomes, The Good Book (New York: William Morrow, 1996), 307–8, quoted in Homiletics, 13/1 (January–February 2001): 46–47.
26. J. Hughes, “Boulder Reading Effort Aims to Turn Page on Racism,” Denver Post (Feb. 26, 2002).
1. Interpreters have not come to agreement on the divisions. Scherer, Das Weise Wort und Seine Wirkung, 320–33, divides 22:1–10, 11–16; Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver, 304–11, divides 22:1–5, 6–16; Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 119, argues that vv. 1–6 come together as an instruction to the young.
2. Clifford, Proverbs, 196, takes the basic sense of nepeš as “throat,” a reference to human speech: “Proverbs regards speaking as the most characteristic human activity. In this saying it stands for human activity as such. The message, to keep safe, speak rightly.” However speech does not appear in this section until v. 11.
3. The topics of training and the poor (vv. 6–7) follow in same sequence in vv. 15–16, forming an inclusio (Garrett, Proverbs, 187).
4. The term describes the initial use of buildings in Num. 7:10; Deut. 20:5; 1 Kings 8:63; 2 Chron 7:5. Abraham sent out his initiated men to rescue Lot (Gen. 14:14). The word uses the same root as that used for Hanukkah, the celebration of the rededication of the temple in the intertestamental era. So the NIV footnote presents the alternative reading, “Start.”
5. T. Hildebrandt, “Proverbs 22:6a: Train Up a Child?” Grace Theological Journal 9/1 (1988): 3–19; reprinted in Learning from the Sages: Studies on the Book of Proverbs, ed. R. Zuck (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995), 277–92. Hildebrant’s understanding of the root hnk is influenced by S. C. Reif, “Dedicated to HNK,” VT 22 (1972): 501.
6. See Hildebrandt, “Proverbs 22:6a,” 14–16, who proposes a fifth view, in which the young man is initiated into the status of a highborn squire of the court. “The intent then of this verse addresses a late adolescent’s entrance into his place in adult society. This should be done with celebration and encouragement—giving him respect, status and responsibilities commensurate with his position as a young adult” (p. 3).
7. Murphy, Proverbs, 165, claims the proverb “has more bite if it is directed to the poor . . . since it warns them that they must strive to be independent, or they will lose their freedom to their creditors.” However, in context, the proverb is also a goad to those who have a solid place in society, those in a position to lend. Both parties are responsible—the potential borrower to avoid borrowing, the lender to be kind with that rule, remembering that a good name is more desirable than riches (22:1) and that Yahweh is Maker of rich and poor (22:2).
8. The same phrase is used of Yahweh’s judgment in Lam. 3:1. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 198, finds a close parallel in Isa. 14:5–6, in which Yahweh breaks the ruling rod of wicked oppressors like Babylon. Clifford, Proverbs, 197, thinks the rod is a threshing flail, one stick attached to another to beat out grain (cf. Isa. 28:27), an image consistent with the agricultural metaphor of the first line. In any case, it is not the rod of discipline in 22:15 and 23:14, for it is viewed positively in those proverbs.
9. Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard quotes the generous landowner who asks, “Are you envious (of evil eye) because I am generous (good)?” (Matt. 20:15).
10. Clifford, Proverbs, 195, suggests that the king should be the subject of both lines: “The king is a friend to the pure-hearted; one gracious of lips is his companion.”
11. D. W. Thomas, “A Note on daʿat in Proverbs 22:12,” JTS 14 (1963): 93–94. So also Clifford, Proverbs, 198, who notes that a bribe undermines the words of the innocent in a trial or subverts a just cause (Ex. 23:8 and Deut. 16:19). So God “watches over the plans of the human hearts and subverts lying words.”
12. Whybray, Composition, 120.
13. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 199, notes the positive image of woman as a well in 5:15–20. Without water, a well becomes a dangerous pit (cf, 23:27)!
14. Quoted in Kidner, Proverbs, 149.
15. The four sayings that have the phrase “come to poverty” are of a kind. Behaviors that lead to poverty are mistreating the poor by withholding instead of giving (11:24), laziness (14:23), lack of planning and haste (21:5), and favoring rich over poor (22:16). The first and last deal with treatment of rich and poor, the other two treat laziness and haste.
16. Whybray, Composition, 119–20. Many of the symbolic figures of the instructions appear: the “unfaithful” or wicked man, the sluggard, and the strange woman (22:12–14).
17. T. Longman III, How to Read Proverbs, 120, finds seven themes in the proverbs on wealth and poverty: (1) God blesses the righteous with wealth; (2) foolish behavior leads to poverty; (3) the wealth of fools will not last; (4) poverty is the result of injustice and oppression; (5) those with money must be generous; (6) wisdom is better than wealth; (7) wealth has limited value.
18. L. J. Hoppe, Being Poor: A Biblical Study (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1987), 92–97.
19. R. E. Murphy, “Proverbs: 22:1–9,” Int 41 (1987): 398–402.
20. Garrett, Proverbs, 187.
21. W. H. Willimon, “Where Are You Headed? A Bit of Proverbial Wisdom (Proverbs 22:1),” Pulpit Digest (March/April 1998), 71–76 (quote from p. 73).
22. R. Mouw, The Smell of Sawdust: What Evangelicals Can Learn from Their Fundamentalist Heritage (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 24.
23. Ibid., 123.
24. M. O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford/New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 170.
25. Ibid., 69–70, 78.
26. A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Doubleday, Anchor, 1969), 506, 508; quoted in R. N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, updated ed. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985, 1996), 37.
27. Ibid., xi.
28. Ibid., xiii, xxxi; citing L. Thurow, Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe, and America (New York: Warner, 1992).
1. See the outline of Proverbs in the introduction. A similar title, “These also are sayings of the wise,” appears in 24:23, where it marks the transition to a smaller section.
2. “Give your ears, hear the sayings, Give your heart to understand them; It profits to put them in your heart, Woe to him who neglects them! Let them rest in the casket of your belly, May they be bolted in your heart; When there rises a whirlwind of words, They’ll be a mooring post for your tongue” (Lichtheim, AEL, 2:149).
3. G. E. Bryce, A Legacy of Wisdom: The Egyptian Contribution to the Wisdom of Israel (Lewisburg,, Pa.: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1979), 101–2. Bryce concludes there are varying degrees of Egyptian influence on phrases and concepts, some more direct than others, and he recognizes that some parts of the “sayings of the wise” show no influence.
4. The LXX reads trissos (“three times”), and the TNK has a “threefold lore.” Could this be taken as an introduction to the last third of the book?
5. Murphy provides a balanced assessment of the question in Proverbs, 290–94, and The Tree of Life, 23–25. See also J. H. Walton, “Cases of Alleged Borrowing” in Ancient Israelite Literature In Its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 192–97; Whybray’s review of research in Proverbs: A Survey of Modern Study, 6–14, 78–84.
6. J. Ruffle, “The Teaching of Amenemope and Its Connection with the Book of Proverbs,” TynBul 28 (1977): 29–68; reprinted in R. B. Zuck, Learning from the Sages: Selected Studies on the Book of Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 293–331. Ruffle concedes that half of the first part of the sayings of the wise treat the same subjects as Amenemope, and after granting that this seems more than coincidental, he suggests that an Egyptian scribe working in Solomon’s court may have used a text that was part of his early training. Differences could be attributed to a combination of rhetorical purpose and foggy memory.
7. Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 602. Clifford, Proverbs, 200, notes that Amenemope exemplifies a later form of Egyptian instruction that “displays a new inwardness and a quest for serenity. . . . The ideal is not achievement but contemplation, modesty, compassion, and serenity.” See also Lichtheim’s comments in AEL, 2:146.
8. “Heart” here is the “inner parts” of previous sayings (beṭen; cf. 18:8, 20; 20:27, 30; 26:22).
9. Clifford, Proverbs, 206, notes that yhwh is the center word in 22:17–21.
10. The word “truth” is unusual and rare, perhaps Aramaic (cf. Dan. 2:47; 4:37). It may refer to the “truthful integrity with probity” that inspires confidence. A. Cody, “Notes on Proverbs 22:21 and 22:23b,” Bib 61 (1980): 418–26. The Heb. text repeats the roots of “reliable words” in the second line. “Words of truth” is allowable in both instances (Garrett, Proverbs, 196).
11. The word “debts” is a new addition to the teaching on pledges. Its root only occurs here and in Deut. 24:10, where it is translated as “loan.” If the loan is to someone who is poor, no security is to be taken.
12. The word for “skilled” (mahir) describes one who is speedy, or by extension, diligent and attentive. Ezra, was a scribe skilled (NIV “well versed”) in the law of Moses (Ezra 7:6); the king’s singer of Ps. 45:1 was a “ready scribe” (NRSV) or “skillful writer” (NIV).
13. D. F. Morgan, The Making of Sages: Biblical Wisdom and Contemporary Culture (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2002), 73, believes that too many clergy delegate the task of education or shirk it altogether. “In the contemporary period, the fact that lay leaders take over the responsibility for teaching means, as one explanation, that it is seen as unimportant by clergy who do not want to do it.”
14. Ibid., 76–83. Drawing from various studies in the history of education in the West, Morgan distinguishes the traditional model of apprenticeship and character formation (paideia) from the newer model and its goal of specialization in an area of knowledge and research (Wissenschaft). Can we encourage interaction between the two in church and public forums?
15. H. C. Washington, Wealth and Poverty in the Instruction of Amenemope and the Hebrew Proverbs (SBLDS 142; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994). Washington argues that Proverbs, like Amenemope, reflects a heightened awareness of the poor in society.
1. The root byn can mean “discern.” Other uses of the root in the ch. translate as the nouns “wisdom” (23:4) and “understanding” (23:23).
2. The phrase might be translated, “Put a blade to your throat if you are not master of your appetite.”
3. In Proverbs “lies” typically pour out of a false witness (6:19; 14:5, 25; 19:5, 9).
4. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs, 94–96, notes the shift in emphasis from the individual proverbs where justly acquired wealth does last, and only hasty or quick riches are condemned.
5. Clifford, Proverbs, 210–11, thinks the opposite, that uninvited guests are the “thieves who will suffer the same consequences as those who rob the poor in Amenemope, ch. 11. They cannot keep their unjust gain.” Amenemope reads, “A poor man’s goods are a block in the throat, it makes the gullet vomit.”
6. The extensive footnote in the niv shows the difficulty of translation. It is not certain whether we are to read the word as “calculate” (šaʾar; TNK “like one keeping accounts”) or “puts on a feast” (niv note), or as another word that means “hair” (śeʿar, NRSV, following the LXX, “for like a hair in the throat”; Amenemope 11, “a block in the throat”). Although the translation is uncertain, the point about restraint is clear.
7. The goʾel is one who steps in on behalf of the family to execute some sort of responsibility of redemption by paying a debt (Lev. 25:48ff.), buying back land (Lev. 25:25ff.), exacting a debt, avenging blood (Num. 35:12ff.) or, in the case of Yahweh, redeeming those who are in trouble (cf. Job 19:25; Jer. 50:34); see TWOT, 300.
8. In the ancient world, the rod became a symbol of correction, that which beats folly out of the fool (cf. 22:15). Those punishments are preferable to death, as the wordplay on “not die” and šeʾol shows. “If I beat you, my son, you will not die; but if I leave you alone, [you will not live]”; Ahiqar, line 82 in J. Lindenberger, “Ahiqar: A New Translation and Introduction,” Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 2:480–507.
9. The second line of v. 17 does not translate easily. Some interpreters carry the personal emphasis of “sinners” into the next line, supplying a subject for fear of Yahweh: “but rather those who revere Yahweh at all times” (Clifford, Proverbs, 202).
10. The Heb. allows for subtle differences in translation—“keep your heart on the right path” (NIV, taking “heart” as the subject of the verb) or “walk the way of your heart” (Murphy, Proverbs, 172, following Heb. word order, with “heart” as construct/object), also paraphrased as “walk on the path your own heart chooses” (Clifford, Proverbs, 213). Whatever the translation, the main point of choosing wisdom over peer pressure remains clear.
11. The phrase “multiplies the unfaithful” is difficult to translate. Clifford, Proverbs, 205, following TNK, suggests, “She destroys the faithless,” after Zeph. 1:2–3. Whybray, Proverbs, 340, notes two meanings: (1) passive participle, “deceived” or “betrayed”; (2) collective noun meaning “treachery”; trans., “She repeatedly acts treacherously toward men.”
12. The poem personifies the wine, depicting it as “giving its eye” (yiten ʿeyno) that sparkles or winks at the one who stares at it, thus suggesting a form of seduction. See 6:24–26 for a similar enticement based on visual appearance (esp. the eyes in 6:25), and the role played by the senses in the seduction of 7:6–23. Is it a coincidence that teachings on the wayward woman and seductive wine are juxtaposed here as drunkenness and seduction in ch. 5 (cf. the key word šgh, “intoxicated” or “staggering” in 5:19–20, 23)? See also the comparison of love with wine in Song 7:9.
13. Murphy, Proverbs, 177, directs the reader to Ps. 107:27 for a similar description of the highs and lows of a stormy sea.
14. G. R. Miller and M. Real, “Postmodernity and Popular Culture: Understanding our National Pastime,” in The Postmodern Presence: Readings on Postmodernism in American Culture and Society, ed. A. A. Berger (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira, 1998), 17–34.
15. The boundary saying is one of a pair in the “sayings of the wise,” and their appearance may mark off a chiastic section. This mirror pattern would pair the boundary sayings (22:28; 23:10–11), the skilled worker and the fool (22:29; 23:9), and the two tables (23:1–3, 6–8), placing the fleeting riches at the center (23:4–5).
16. D. C. Meyers, “Wealth, Well-Being, and the New American Dream,” Enough: A Quarterly Report on Consumption, the Quality Life and the Environment 12 (Summer 2000): 5, quoted in C. Sine and T. Sine, Living on Purpose: Finding God’s Best for Your Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 36.
17. Sine and Sine, Living on Purpose, 70–71.
18. K. Scheibe, The Drama of Everyday Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000), 113, 122–23. “Whatever the origins of these differences in genes or in culture, women do not accumulate as much money as men, and men do not accumulate as many clothes. No male counterpart can be found for Imelda Marcos’s collection of 3,000 pairs of shoes.” However, Scheibe said little about alcoholism that seems to make no gender distinction.
19. Ibid., 116.
20. K. Miller, Sin: Overcoming the Ultimate Deadly Addiction (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986).
21. S. R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic (New York: Fireside, 1989), 106–9, 137–43.
1. Clifford, Proverbs, 199, proposes a three-part structure to “the sayings of the wise”: 22:17–23:11, addressed to those starting a career; 23:12–35, speaking to the concerns of youth; 24:1–22, depicting the destinies of the righteous and the wicked.
2. Something of a mirror structure appears, matching the pairs of yhwh sayings at beginning and end (22:19, 23; 24:18, 21), a pair that indirectly names Yahweh (23:11; 24:12), and a charge to fear Yahweh near the middle (23:17).
3. V. A. Hurowitz, “An Often Overlooked Alphabetic Acrostic in Proverbs 24:1–22,” RB (2000): 526–40, argues that 24:1–22 are set apart by the acrostic form. The proposal involves a number of emendations and changes, including placing v. 9 after v. 10. Hurowitz believes that the verses then fall into a mirror structure: A and A’ (vv. 1–2, 19–22), B and B’ (vv. 3–4, 15–18), C and C’ (vv. 5–6, 13–14), D and D’ (vv. 7–8, relocated v. 9), with X (vv. 10–12) at the center. In my opinion, one can observe literary features such as mirror repetitions without insisting on a tightly organized structure that requires making changes in the Heb. verse order.
4. This is the last occurrence of taḥbulot in the book (cf. 1:5; 11:14; 12:5; 20:18). “Increases strength” reminds the reader of increasing learning in 1:5.
5. The uses of mezimmah in chs. 1–9 are positive (“discretion, discernment” in 1:4; 2:11; 3:21; 5:2; 8:12), but in the individual proverbs and here (24:8–9), it takes on the negative cast of “crafty” or “scheming” (12:2; 14:17).
6. Hubbard, Proverbs, 373, lists three righteous acts that deliver from death: to thwart oppression of the poor, foil false arrests, and break up gang violence.
7. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 145–47; Proverbs, 356. The LXX places this section after 30:14.
8. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:410, proposes a three-part parallel structure: A (vv. 23–25, 28), B (vv. 26, 29), C (v. 27, 30–34). Garrett, Proverbs, 201, has a simpler proposal that is supported by the repetition of “lips” in verses 26 and 28: A (vv. 23–26, 28–29), B (vv. 27, 30–34).
9. “Honest” (nekoaḥ) is a rare word, used only eight times in the Old Testament, most often by the prophets as a synonym for that which is right (Prov. 8:9; Isa. 30:10; 57:2; 59:14; Jer. 17:16).
10. J. M. Cohen, “An Unrecognized Connotation of nšq peh with Special Reference to Three Biblical Occurrences,” VT 32 (1982): 416–24. Cohen translates, “He that gives forthright judgment will silence all hostile lips,” based on the image of pressing lips together to kiss or to keep silence. The latter meaning is attested in the rabbinic literature. However, to do so, Cohen has to bring in “hostile” by imposing the context of the law court. In other contexts, the honest words simply refer to telling the truth (Clifford, Proverbs, 217).
11. The terms “without cause” and “deceive” appear in 1:10–11, where the bandits “entice” (cf. 16:29) the young man to attack a “harmless soul” (“for no reason,” ḥinnam; cf. 3:30; 26:2).
12. McKane, Proverbs, 575, argues that vengeance becomes a cruel taskmaster that in the end will destroy us.
13. On the sluggard, see also 6:6, 9; 10:26; 13:4; 15:19; 19:24; 20:4; 21:25; 22:13; 26:13–16.
14. The NIV text note shows that the translation “vagrant . . . beggar” is also permissible.
15. See also J. C. McCann, “Wisdom’s Dilemma: The Book of Job, the Final Form of the Book of Psalms, and the Entire Bible,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister, ed. M. L. Barre (CBQMS 29; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 18–30.
16. P. C. Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978); see also T. R. Hobbs, A Time for War: A Study of Warfare in the Old Testament (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1989).
17. C. Colson, Who Speaks for God? Confronting the World with Real Christianity (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1985), 12–13.
18. Ibid., 38–41.
19. C. Colson, “The Power Illusion,” in Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church, ed. M. S. Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1992), 29–30; reprinted from Kingdoms in Conflict (New York and Grand Rapids: W. Morrow and Zondervan, 1987).
1. See the outline of the book of Proverbs in the introduction.
2. G. Bryce, “Another Wisdom ‘Book’ in Proverbs,” JBL 91 (1972): 145–57; and A Legacy of Wisdom: The Egyptian Contribution to the Wisdom of Israel (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1979), 135–62. Bryce proposes a structure that alternates between praise of the king and condemnation of the wicked: king, vv. 2–3; wicked, vv. 4–5; king, vv. 6–15; wicked, vv. 16–26.
3. R. C. Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25–27 (SBLDS 96; Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1988), 64–65. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:416, includes v. 28.
4. M. Carasik, “Who Were the ‘Men of Hezekiah’ (Proverbs 25:1)?” VT 44 (1994): 289. Carasik believes that the superscription is a canonical allusion to Hezekiah’s story in 2 Kings 18–19.
5. The word for God (ʾ elohim) is only used in two other proverbs, both with the verb “to find” (mṣʾ ): knowledge of God (2:5) and favor of God and humanity (3:4). God is the one who knows where hidden wisdom is found, leaving humans to search it out (Job 11:7–10; 28:3, 11, 20–21).
6. L. Kalugila, The Wise King: Studies in Royal Wisdom as Divine Revelation in the Old Testament and its Environment (CBOT 15; Lund: LiberLäromedel/Gleerup, 1980).
7. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “A Technical Metallurgical Usage of yṣʾ,” ZAW 98 (1986): 112–13, takes v. 5 as a paradigm for the whole chapter.
8. Clifford, Proverbs, 221, points out that it is also possible to translate “to humble yourself” or “lower yourself,” preserving the up and down imagery.
9. Some translate “aptly” as “finely wrought.” Garrett, Proverbs, 207, makes an interesting case that the dual form of the word might be read as “on its wheels,” the two wheels being like the two lines of the proverb.
10. Here is an appreciation for the role of the hearer in communication: the “receptor reigns” (C. H. Kraft, Communication Theory for Christian Witness, rev. ed. [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991]).
11. The LXX has “vinegar on a wound” (followed by NRSV), similar to the vinegar on the teeth (10:26).
12. Amenemope, 5:1–9, in Lichtheim, AEL, 2:150: “Don’t raise an outcry against one who attacks you, Nor answer him yourself. . . . Lift him up, give him your hand. Leave him (in) the hands of the god; Fill his belly with bread of your own, that he be sated and weep.”
13. See S. Segert, “Live Coals Heaped on the Head,” in Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, ed. J. H. Marks and R. M. Good (Guilford, Conn.: Four Quarters, 1987): 159–64.
14. Garrett, Proverbs, 209, paraphrases the difficult grammar: “As a cold wind gives birth to rains, so cold looks give birth to a storm of slander.”
15. Bryce (“Another Wisdom ‘Book,’ ” 145–57) observed an inclusio, in which nearly every root of 25:2–3 repeats in 25:27. Efforts to read the difficult Hebrew and account for the differences in the ancient versions have led some to emend the text. One that follows Latin Vulgate translates, “It is not good to eat too much honey, and he who searches for glory will be distressed” (or “oppressed”) (A. A. Macintosh, “A Note on Proverbs 25:27,” VT 20 [1970]: 112–14). Garrett, Proverbs, 210, emends to read, “But seeking out difficult things is glorious,” comparing the bad of excess sweets with the good of unraveling the sages’ riddles. The translation itself is a riddle that humbles the interpreter!
16. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs 25:27 Once Again,” VT 36 (1986): 105–14, translates, “To eat much honey is not good and to seek difficult things is (no) glory.” This translation reads the “not” in the first clause as a double-duty negative (GKC 152, p. 478 n.1) and brings the theme in line with Job 11:7–10; Sir. 3:21–23; 7:4–7; and Ahiqar 47, “Do not despise that which is your lot, nor covet some great thing which is withheld from you.”
17. W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 718–20, speaks of a “metanarrative of military consumerism,” by which leaders and citizens alike are persuaded that well-being and happiness are secured by acquiring goods and using whatever force is needed to protect them. In his view, the Old Testament provides resources for another narrative, or “counter-testimony.” See also R. Clapp, ed., The Consuming Passion: Christianity and the Consumer Culture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998).
18. W. S. Stafford, Disordered Loves: Healing the Seven Deadly Sins (Cambridge/Boston: Cowley Publications, 1994), 21. The seven deadly sins are: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, envy, sloth, and pride. Stafford shows how we are susceptible to each and offers disciplines that lead us to grace and healing.
19. Q. J. Schultze, Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000) 31–33.
1. B. Waltke, “Old Testament Interpretation Issues for Big Idea Preaching,” in The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching: Connecting the Bible to People, ed. K. Willhite and S. Gibson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 41–52. Waltke finds the “big idea” of what is fitting (and not fitting) for the fool is the key to preaching this chapter.
2. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 123–24, separates the quarreler and the deceiver.
3. T. Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Pairs: Compositional Units in Proverbs 10–29,” JBL 107 (1988): 210–11.
4. K. Hoglund, “The Fool and the Wise in Dialogue,” in The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom and the Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., ed. K. G. Hoglund et al. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987): 161–80.
5. Garrett, Proverbs, 212.
6. D. C. Snell, “The Most Obscure Verse in Proverbs: Proverbs 26:10,” VT 41 (1991): 350–56. Snell’s proposal, “A great one makes a fool of everyone, and a drunkard is a fool (even) of passers-by,” has not been widely adopted.
7. Clifford, Proverbs, 233.
8. Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25–27, 116–19.
9. A number of commentators (Clifford, Murphy, and Van Leeuwen) divide the verse after “passer-by,” making the dog that one passing by. The repositioning is important since the same Heb. root is repeated in the word “meddle” (ʾbr). The double sense of “passing by” and “meddling” is important to the punch of the proverb.
10. Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning, 99.
11. Stafford, Disordered Loves, 93–94. The discussion that follows is adapted from this work. The word “envy” is derived from the Latin invidia, the “evil eye” or curse that people of ancient Rome gave to those who had success or beauty they did not, believing the look would bring misfortune or even death.
1. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:449, uses the three-line sayings as section markers (27:10, 22, and 27).
2. The Egyptian instructions use the theme. Ptahhotep: “One plans the morrow but knows not what will be” (Lichtheim, AEL, 1:69). Amenemope: “Do not lie down in fear of tomorrow: ‘Comes day, how will tomorrow be?’ Man ignores how tomorrow will be” (Lichtheim, AEL, 2:157).
3. However one should not put up security for a “stranger” (zar; cf. 6:1; 11:15; 20:16).
4. N. M. Waldman, “A Note on Excessive Speech and Falsehood,” JQR 67 (1976): 142–45.
5. Garrett, Proverbs, 217, sees an ABAB pattern in vv. 7–10, although I would argue it may continue into vv. 11–12, where gladness is followed by the error of “going” (cf. vv. 8, 10).
6. The nearly identical proverb in 20:16 has an alternate reading “foreigners” (nokerim; cf. “someone else” in 27:2) instead of “wayward woman” (nokriyyah); the NRSV follows this reading and translates 27:13, “seize the pledge given as surety for foreigners.” The Hebrew text makes sense as it stands.
7. The Heb. letters ṣpn can also be read “north,” so the LXX translates, “The north wind is sharp, but it is called lucky.” A similar wordplay may be at work in 25:23–24.
8. Because oil was a medium for fragrance in the ancient world, Garrett, Proverbs, 220, translates, “He who keeps her keeps wind, and he will call [her] the perfume of his right hand,” so as to say a quarrelsome wife is like an expense that does him little good, a contrast to the good wife of Prov. 31. Clifford, Proverbs, 236, translates, “the oil on her hand announces her presence,” suggesting that like strong perfume, her contentious character cannot be hidden.
9. Clifford, Proverbs, 236, following the LXX, reads, “face to face” instead of “reflects the face” (cf. Deut. 34:10; Ezek. 20:35); “words are the route to the core of the person.” Garrett, Proverbs, 221, argues that just as the water is an exact reflection of a person’s face, so the heart reflects what the person is. “In other words people have a basic consistency to them. . . . One should learn how to read people and thus learn whom to trust.”
10. R. C. Van Leeuwen, Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25–27, 133–43, takes the interplay between “house” and “kingdom/dynasty” as evidence that someone in Hezekiah’s time believed that the monarchy was not inviolable (cf. 2 Sam. 7:1–17; Jer. 26:16–17; Mic. 3:12). B. Malchow, “A Manual for Future Monarchs: Proverbs 27:23–29:27,” CBQ 47 (April 1985): 238–45, reprinted in R. B. Zuck, Learning From the Sages: Selected Studies on the Book of Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 353–60, argues that a royal instruction manual begins with 27:23–27 and extends to 29:27.
11. ANET, 159, 164, 265–66, 440, 443.
12. The emphatic idiom “be sure you know” is variously translated, “know [this] for certain,” or “you shall surely know” (cf. Gen. 15:13; 1 Sam. 28:1; 1 Kings 2:37, 42).
13. Clifford, Proverbs, 237, along with a number of other interpreters, finds “crown” (nezer) out of place and emends to “treasure” (ʾoṣar), following Isa. 33:6 and Jer. 20:5.
14. This word for “grass” (ʿśb) only appears here and in 19:12, “A king’s rage is like the roar of a lion, but his favor is like dew on the grass.”
15. Hubbard, Proverbs, 418, takes this as a warning against get-rich-quick schemes and cites Ezek. 34. Perdue, Proverbs, 226–27, believes the sages who served at court may have been gentlemen farmers.
16. W. H. Willimon, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 311.
17. These stories come from interviews I’ve read and heard with former Bluegrass Boy Peter Rowan.
18. P. Kreeft, For Heaven’s Sake (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986), 107. Kreeft adds, “An economic system based on money rather than natural wealth (land, food, houses) has no natural, built-in limit to the flames of avarice. Since the desire for artificial wealth (money) is infinite, the miser always wants more” (110).
19. Stafford, Disordered Loves: Healing the Seven Deadly Sins, 64–65.
20. Ibid., 71–72.
21. D. Atkinson, “A Christian Theology of Work,” in his Pastoral Ethics (Oxford: Lynx Communications, 1994), 104–11.
22. P. Schwartz and B. Gibb, When Good Companies Do Bad Things: Responsibility and Risk in an Age of Globalization (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), 118.
23. Ibid., 175.
24. C. Frazier, Cold Mountain (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1997), 80.
25. Ibid., 228.
1. The section is divided in two by the pastoral poem at 27:23–27 and is framed with a repeated juxtaposition of rulers and their God (25:1–2; 29:26–27). Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 605, saw that chs. 25–27 contained “vivid pen-pictures,” with few references to God or the righteous-wicked pair. Here in chs. 28–29 the “balance is reversed, and questions of morality and theology return.”
2. B. Malchow, “A Manual for Future Monarchs,” CBQ 47 (1985): 238–45. So also Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:464. Murphy, Proverbs, 213, 218, accepts Malchow’s observations but not the conclusion; in his view, it is not a manual for rulers but the teaching of the sages.
3. Kidner, Proverbs, 168. Clifford, Proverbs, 243, looks to Lev. 26:17, 36, a curse for disobedience to the covenant, running even when the enemy has stopped giving chase.
4. Whybray, Proverbs, 393, along with other interpreters, observes that this is the only verse in Proverbs that speaks of God’s forgiveness of the penitent. Murphy, Proverbs, 216, looks to Ps. 32 and Job 31:33–34 for parallels and stresses the public nature of the confession. It is made before the community and God. “One can cover the faults of another (Prov. 10:12) but not one’s own sins.”
5. The word is not yiraʾ, as used in the phrase “fear of the LORD,” but paḥad, “trembles” (Ps. 119:120; cf. Prov. 1:33; 3:25). “The LORD” is not written in the Heb. but is implied (cf. 14:16).
6. The word for prince (nagid) occurs only here in Proverbs; many commentators suggest that it overloads the line and may have been inserted by later scribes. On the basis of the Greek Septuagint, others recommend that “lacks judgment” be changed to “lacks revenue,” thus motivating the oppression.
7. G. R. Driver, “Problems in the Hebrew Text of Proverbs,” Bib 32 (1951): 192. Driver repoints the Heb. to read “a man addicted to bloodshed shall flee into the pit.”
8. Clifford, Proverbs, 242.
9. There is some debate whether “suddenly” (lit., “at once”) should be dropped on the basis of the LXX, which has “pit” (see NRSV). We withhold judgment and follow the Hebrew text with emphasis on the verb “fall.”
10. Murphy, Proverbs, 217.
11. Murphy, ibid., 217, looks to the Decalogue and the concrete sayings 19:26; 20:20; 28:24; 30:11, 17.
12. Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 605, suggests that trust in one’s self turns one away from God and others and is thus doubly stupid.
13. R. E. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 167–68. Webber adds that the early church lived in a tension between being separate from the world, identified with the world, and seeking to transform the world.
14. Willimon, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002) 256–57. For this reason, Willimon adds that “because the consequences of Spirit-filled speech tend to be political, economic, and social, therefore we must discipline ourselves to read Scripture congregationally, ecclessially, and therefore politically, rather than therapeutically, subjectively, inductively, or relevantly, as the world defines relevance.”
15. J. Westerhoff, “Westerhoff on Stewardship,” Giving 3 (2001): 18–22.
16. Ibid., 19.
17. C. Sine and T. Sine, Living on Purpose: Finding God’s Best for Your Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002). The Sines cite Donald Kraybill in The Upside Down Kingdom (Scottsdale, Ariz.: Herald, 1990), 137: “Faithful stewards are fugal when calculating their own needs and generous in responding to the needs of others.”
18. Yet only 35 percent agreed that “if enough people are brought to Christ, social problems will take care of themselves” (J. M. Penning and C. E. Smidt, Evangelicalism: The Next Generation [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002]). The authors add: “Evangelical college students hold a social theology that reflects views historically associated with American evangelicalism. Evangelical college students still adhere to an individualistic world view, for they believe that social problems are best addressed by changing individual hearts than by reforming social institutions. . . . Social problems do not disappear because sin does not disappear even among those who are brought to Christ,” 117–18.
1. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs, 127–28, adds that vv. 10–17 may form a subsection on the need for kings to learn wisdom like everyone else.
2. Strictly speaking, the leapfrog of key words only shows up in vv. 17–21, although “child/youth” (naʿar), repeats at vv. 15 and 21.
3. Malchow, “A Manual for Future Monarchs: Proverbs 27:23–29:27,” 241, says that this verse is a centerpiece to chs. 28–29, similar to the function of 25:16 in 25:2–27; cf. Bryce, A Legacy of Wisdom, 142.
4. The NRSV removes the ambiguity of the translation: “Whoever flatters a neighbor is spreading a net for the neighbor’s feet.” The parallel structure of the proverb sets flattery directed toward (ʿal) a neighbor against the net for (ʿal) the feet.
5. Murphy, Proverbs, 219–20, translates, “Those who shed blood hate the blameless, but the upright seeks him out.” G. R. Driver took “seek” (root bqš) as “make great or magnify,” as in “but the upright magnify, make much of his life” (“Problems in the Hebrew Text of Proverbs,” Bib 32 [1951]: 194).
6. Kidner, Proverbs, 175.
7. It is not clear what “left to himself” (lit., “let go, sent out,” mešullah) means; some take it as “unrestrained” (Murphy), “let loose” (Clifford), “neglected” (NRSV), or even “out of control” (TNK). The nuance of the word, here set in contrast with “discipline,” is more like an animal left to graze (Isa. 27:10) than a bird driven from its nest by a hunter (Isa. 16:2).
8. The Heb. roots for “peace” (or “rest,” nuaḥ) and “delight” (maʿ adannim, same root as “Eden”) both appear in the description of the garden (Gen. 2:15).
9. The LXX reads “interpreter”; some emend the Heb. to a related word for “supervisor,” but the principle of leadership is clear enough without disturbing the parallel of “vision” and “law.”
10. Malchow, “A Manual for Future Monarchs,” 242–43, takes it as a warning to aspiring rulers that the lack of such vision (cf. Job 4:12; 32:8–10; Prov. 2:6) is a cause of-anarchy.
11. V. A. Hurowitz, “Proverbs 29:22–27: Another Unnoticed Alphabetic Acrostic,” JSOT 92 (2001): 121–25. The proposed acrostic is complicated but coherent. Simply stated, v. 22 begins with aleph and v. 27 with tav, with repeated words appearing in chiastic order: “man” (ʾiš, vv. 22, 27), “many” (rab, vv. 22, 26), “man” (ʾadam, vv. 23, 25), and “low/lowly” (root špl, v. 23).
12. Clifford, Proverbs, 255.
13. Whybray, Proverbs, 405, believes that such fear may lead to those behaviors that in Proverbs are compared to snares (pledges, adultery, violence).
14. The word is most often used with the LORD in Proverbs (e.g., 3:32; 6:16; 11:1, 20; 12:22; 15:8, 9, 26; 16:5; 20:10, 23; and perhaps 28:9), but also of kings (16:12), wisdom (8:7), fools (13:19), general reaction to mockers (24:9), corrupt judging (17:15), and “seven abominations” (26:25).
15. Perdue, Proverbs, 239, suggests that the chapter sums up themes from chs. 25–29: the contrasts between righteousness and wickedness, and wisdom and folly, and the choice between the two poles that faces every ruler.
16. As noted in the introductory comments to ch. 29, all three Heb. roots from that verse appear in this chaper.
17. Murphy, Proverbs, 224, hypothesizes mistreatment of parents and says that such correction must have been needed!
18. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Building God’s House: An Exploration in Wisdom,” in J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund, eds., The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 210. “Since this neopagan society overwhelmingly shapes the media and forms of our communal life, the church’s most difficult spiritual battles may not concern what we do in worship or in private. Rather, it is in our public, civic existence that we Christians are prone to sin and fall short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23).”
19. See Penning and Smidt, Evangelicalism: The Next Generation. This survey seeks to update the information gathered by J. Hunter in Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987). See also the comments on Penning and Smidt in ch. 28.
20. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, 164–73 (see also the comments on Webber’s book in ch. 28).
1. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:496, finds an echo with ch. 3 and its emphasis on relationship with God (30:1–9; cf. 3:1–12) and neighbor (30:10–16; cf. 3:21–35).
2. The LXX places 30:1–14 before 24:23–34 and 30:15–33 after.
3. A distant possibility suggested by some is “Sojourner, son of Piety,” but that does not clearly follow from the Heb. Agur translates as “I fear” in Deut. 32:27, “I dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest the adversary misunderstand and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed; the LORD has not done all this.’ ” The very next verse (32:28) reports that Israel was foolish, not wise.
4. “Massa” appears as an Arabian tribe in the Assyrian literature. See 1 Kings 4:30–31 for a reference to sages of the east.
5. The verbs for “weary” and “exhausted” are also paired in Jer. 20:9. “I am faint” most likely is derived from a passive sense of ʾkl, “to consume” (P. Franklyn, “The Sayings of Agur in Proverbs 30: Piety or Scepticism?” ZAW 95 [1983]: 238–52). E. Strömberg Krantz, “A Man Not Supported by God”: On Some Crucial Words in Proverbs 30:1,” VT 46 (1996): 548–53, reads, “God is not with him” for Ithiel.
6. Clifford, Proverbs, 260–61, notes the similarity of this vocabulary to oracles of Balaam (Num. 24:15–17) and David (2 Sam. 23:1)—“traditional language of seers recounting their vision.”
7. J. L. Crenshaw, “Clanging Symbols,” in Justice and the Holy: Essays in Honor of Walter Harrelson, ed. D. A Knight and P. J. Paris (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1989), 56–57.
8. The questions remind the reader of God’s questions to Job in Job 38–41. Murphy, Proverbs, 228, finds sarcasm in “if you know,” modeled after Job 38:18. Crenshaw, “Clanging Symbols,” 57, thinks the questions and the phrase “if/surely you know” remind the reader of Job 38:5.
9. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “The Background to Proverbs 30:4aá,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister: Essays in Honor of R. E. Murphy, O. Carm., on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. M. L. Barré (CBQMS 29; Washington, D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997): 102–21. Van Leeuwen cites a number of biblical texts that assume this widespread motif: Gen. 11 (and perhaps 28); Amos 9; Isa. 40:12–14; Job 38:4–6; and esp. Deut. 30:11–12. Scott, Proverbs, 179, notes similarities with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Dialogue of Pessimism.
10. Crenshaw, “Clanging Symbols,” 56, revocalizes to read “assumed dominion” instead of “come down,” adding emphasis to the central idea of sovereignty (cf. Ps. 139:8; also Prov. 25:3).
11. Skehan, Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom, 41–43; Murphy, Proverbs, 228–29.
12. K. J. Cathcart suggests “fold in the garment” or “pocket” instead of “hollow of his hands” (“Proverbs 30:4 and Ugaritic HPN, ‘Garment,’ ” CBQ 32 [1970]: 418–20).
13. Skehan, Studies, 41–43, translates Agur as “I am a sojourner” (Ps. 39:13), a mortal passing through this time on earth. Because Jacob described himself as a sojourner (Gen. 47:9), saw the ladder with angels going up and down (Gen. 28:12–13), and is called firstborn son (Exod. 4:22), Agur, like Jacob, is the every man of Israel, the son of Yahweh. The allusion is instructive, but the form ʾagur does not appear in the Old Testament as “I sojourn.” It does appear with the meaning “I fear,” as spoken by Yahweh in Deut. 32:27.
14. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs,” 256, cites 2 Sam. 7:14; Ps. 2:7; 89:26–27. See also Solomon’s praise in 1 Kings 8:14–61; 2 Chron. 6:1–42.
15. Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 606: “He is simply the only one who openly acknowledges ignorance because of the inherent mystery of the things of God.”
16. R. D. Moore, “A Home for the Alien: Worldly Wisdom and Covenantal Confession in Proverbs 30:1–9,” ZAW 106 (1994): 96–107. Moore argues that the citation of David’s last words makes allusion to the Law and Prophets in order to lend legitimacy to wisdom’s place in the canon.
17. Franklyn, “Sayings of Agur,” 251, notes that although God is named throughout, Agur does not use the covenantal name yhwh until the end of the prayer.
18. The structure and grammar of vv. 6 and 10 are nearly identical, creating a frame around Agur’s prayer. See a similar structure in Deut. 23:15–16: “You are not to turn over a slave to his master.”
19. W. Roth, Numerical Sayings in the Old Testament: A Form Critical Study (VTSupp 13; Leiden: Brill, 1965); and “The Numerical Sequence x/x+1 in the Old Testament,” VT 12 (1962): 300–311. Of the thirty-eight examples in the Old Testament and Sirach, twenty-one are poetic in form.
20. Murphy, Proverbs, 235, observes that Sheol is not merely a place but a “power that pursues every living thing.”
21. The theme of dishonoring parents in Proverbs finds its strongest statement here. The word for obedience could be translated “homage” after Gen. 49:10 (Clifford, Proverbs, 265).
22. Murphy, Proverbs, 235, thinks that the way of these travelers is “unrecoverable, mysterious, the way man and woman meet one another and become one.” Clifford, Proverbs, 266, shows that the pairing of humans comes after description of a tripartite universe in Ps. 33:6–8 and 69:34 [35].
23. T. Longman III, How to Read Proverbs, 45, takes “way” as a metaphor for sexual intercourse. So the adulteress contemptuously engages in sex without commitment, ignoring the covenantal commitments of this “way.”
24. M. Haran, “The Graded Numerical Sequence and the Phenomenon of ‘Automatism’ in Biblical Poetry,” (VTSupp 22; Leiden: Brill, 1972): 239–67. Haran argues that there is no connection with v. 20 apart from the catchword “way” and theme of sexual relations.
25. “Way” as illicit sexual relations appears in Jer. 2:23, 33; 3:13. Clifford, Proverbs, 266.
26. R. C. Van Leeuwen, “Proverbs 30:21–23 and the World Upside Down,” JBL 105 (1986): 599–610, cites the Egyptian text “Nefertiti”: “I show you the land in turmoil . . . I show you the master in need, the outsider sated, The lazy stuffs himself, the active is needy. . . . I show you the land in turmoil . . .” (Lichtheim, AEL, 2:139–45), and Isa. 14; Jer. 4; Joel 2; Amos 8. The world upside-down made right appears in 1 Sam. 2:1–10.
27. In fact, failure in covenant may explain why foreigners are given the last word in Proverbs (cf. Deut. 32:27–28), not Solomon or Hezekiah. Perhaps the great riddle of Proverbs is this covenantal rebuke of Solomon and Hezekiah and, by extension, its warning to all persons in leadership and authority.
28. T. Frymer-Kensky, “The Sage in the Pentateuch: Soundings,” in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. J. G. Gammie and L. G. Perdue (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 275–87, observes that in Deuteronomy wisdom is studied, noted by frequent use of the word lmd (“to study, learn”).
29. Crenshaw, “Symbols,” 63–64. “In God’s sight persons who claim to possess knowledge of the Holy One but lack respect for parents, behave hypocritically, think too highly of themselves, and oppress the defenseless are in fact the real atheists of society; for they dissociate justice and the Holy.”
30. See, again, Stafford, Disordered Loves: Healing the Seven Deadly Sins (Cambridge/Boston: Cowley Publications, 1994).
31. P. Kreeft, For Heaven’s Sake (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986), 98.
32. J. Wallis, “Guest Essay: On the Winning Side,” World Vision Today 4/1 (Autumn 2000): 31. Wallis adds: “Someday, by God’s grace, we’ll look into the eyes of wealth, power, greed, and indifference and say, ‘You have already lost, so why don’t you come and join the winning side?’ ”
33. Kreeft, For Heaven’s Sake, 101.
1. The parts have a number of linking features. For example, the four prohibitions of the mother’s teaching (marked by the Heb. negative ʾal) may echo the prayer of Agur in 30:7–10.
2. Clifford, Proverbs, 271, puts it well: “The author transforms traditional warnings to rulers against the abuse of sex and liquor into an exhortation to practice justice . . . applicable to all who are tempted to turn authority into privilege.”
3. After M. H. Lichtenstein, “Chiasm and Symmetry in Proverbs 31,” CBQ 44 (1982): 202–11. Garrett, Proverbs, 248, proposes a different chiastic structure that puts v. 23 at the center, emphasizing the rewards that come to the man at the gate. The structure matches: Wife’s high value (vv. 10, 30–31); Husband’s good (vv. 11–12, 28–29); Wife’s hard work (vv. 13–19, 27); Giving (vv. 20, 26); No fear (vv. 21a, 25b); Clothing (vv. 21b, 25a); Coverings and garments (vv. 22, 24); Public respect for husband (v. 23).
4. M. L. Barré, “ ‘Terminative’ Terms in Hebrew Acrostics,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister: Studies in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (CBQMS 29; Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 207.
5. The first word before each “my son” is mah (“what”), so that the phrase might be translated, “What is this, my son?” Some (TNK, NRSV) translate, “No, my son” and others, “Listen,” after Arabic use; see J. L. Crenshaw, “A Mother’s Instruction to Her Son (Proverbs 31:1–9),” in Perspectives on the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honor of Walter J. Harrelson, ed. J. L. Crenshaw (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1988), 15. The translation of this idiomatic use of mah is difficult, leading to many different renderings: “What is important?” (Meinhold), or “What are you doing?” (Clifford), or “What should I tell you?” (Garrett).
6. Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:518, lists the kings who fell to drink: Elah (1 Kings 16:8–14), Ben-Hadad of Aram (1 Kings 20:16), and kings in general (Eccl. 10:17). The nations of Ephraim (Isa. 28:1; Hos. 7:5) and Israel (Hos. 4:11, 18) are rebuked for succumbing to drink that takes away understanding. On the problem of harems, see Deut. 17:17; 2 Sam. 16:20–22; 1 Kings 11:1–8.
7. M. H. Lichtenstein, “Chiasm and Symmetry in Proverbs 31,” 204–5, explains that just as the order of the words “wine” and “beer” are reversed, so their misuse is followed by the opposite, i.e., its proper use.
8. Murphy, Proverbs, 240–41.
9. B. L. Visotzky, “Midrash Eishet Hayil,” Conservative Judaism 38 (1986): 21–25.
10. T. P. McCreesh, “Wisdom as Wife: Proverbs 31:10–31,” RB 92 (1985): 25–46.
11. B. Waltke, “The Structure of the Valiant Wife (Prov. 31:10–31),” unpublished paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, 1999.
12. McCreesh, “Wisdom As Wife,” 43, finds a reflection of Solomon’s ships in the “ships from afar” (1 Kings 9:26–28 = 2 Chron. 8:17–18; 1 Kings 10:22 = 2 Chron. 9:21).
13. The distaff holds the material being spun into thread by the spindle.
14. The “hand” (yad) extended as far as the elbow; thus the NIV, “opens her arms to the poor.”
15. A number of commentators (Clifford, Murphy) prefer “double” (after the LXX) to “scarlet.” Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:526, finds the color in Ex. 25:4; 2 Sam. 1:24; Isa. 1:18; Jer. 4:30.
16. This “lazy man” interpretation is at least as old as Delitzsch, Proverbs, 327–28. The man “goes after his calling, perhaps a calling which, though weighty and honorable, brings in little or nothing.” However, Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:526, saw the echo of “gates” where Wisdom speaks (1:21; 8:3), where the poor are to receive justice (22:22), and where a fool has nothing to say (24:7).
17. The word for “watches over” (ṣopiyyah, 31:27) may be a pun on the Greek word for wisdom (Sophia), as suggested by A. Wolters, “Ṣôpiyyâ (Prov. 31:27) as Hymnic Participle and Play on Sophia,” JBL 104 (1985): 577–87. In my judgment, a contrast with the woman who is never at home (7:11) seems more likely to have been the writer’s intention.
18. Recall that “fear of LORD” appears not only at the beginning and end of the instructions (1:7, 9:10), but also at the middle of the sayings and the book (15:33). McCreesh, “Wisdom as Wife,” 25–46, adds other references to Wisdom’s house and riches: 3:15; 8:18, 21; 24:3–4; see also 4:6–9 and 16:16.
19. Six of the seven words of 31:31 are also used in the poem: “give” (natenah, v. 24), “from fruit of” (mipperi, v. 16), “her hand” (yadeyah, vv. 19 and 20), “praise” (halelah, vv. 28, 30), “at the gates” (baššeʿarim, v. 23), “her works,” (ʿaśetah, vv. 22, 24).
20. See Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs.
21. E. L. Lyons, “A Note on Proverbs 31:10–31,” in The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom and the Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., ed. K. G. Hoglund et al. (JSOTSup 58; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 237–45. Lyons concludes from archaeological evidence that such a picture of life for Israelite women fits the premonarchic and possibly the postexilic periods. C. R. Yoder, Wisdom As a Woman of Substance: A Socioeconomic Reading of Proverbs 1–9 and 31:10–31 (BZAW 304; Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), finds correspondence with the later Persian period.
22. M. Masenya, “Proverbs 31:10–31 in a South African Context: A Reading for the Liberation of African (Northern Sotho) Women,” Semeia 78 (2002): 55–68.
23. McCreesh, “Wisdom As Wife,” 25–46. McCreesh highlights the call of Woman Wisdom in Prov. 1, 8, and 9. By ch. 9, the call has become an invitation to marriage (9:5; see also Song 5:1 on bread and wine).
24. A. Wolters, “Proverbs 31:10–31 As Heroic Hymn: A Form-Critical Analysis,” VT 38 (1988): 446–57. So also Yahweh fights on behalf of the poor (cf. Ps. 112:10). Wolters notes that both Ps. 111 and 112 begin with Hallelu Yah and both mention fear of Yahweh—Ps. 111 giving the reason for the fear, the acrostic poem of Ps. 112 giving the picture of what it looks like in a faithful person’s life.
25. Goldingay, “Proverbs,” 607, approves of TNK’s translation, a “truly capable woman.” He ascribes the words to Lemuel’s mother, stressing that her teaching role resembles that of the mother as well as personified Wisdom. In his view, the poem encourages women to push the envelope of what is expected, since men need less encouragement to achieve.