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Course 6 · Lesson 5.1

Proverbs and the way of the wise

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 6 outline

Module 1: Israel in the Ancient Near East

  1. Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan: the world of the Old Testament
  2. What archaeology and ancient texts can and cannot show
  3. Genesis 1 to 3 beside other ancient creation accounts
  4. Ancient cosmology and how Christians and Jews read Genesis

Module 2: Covenant: Abraham and Moses

  1. What a covenant is, and covenant forms in the ancient world
  2. The covenants with Noah and Abraham
  3. The exodus and the covenant at Sinai
  4. The Torah: law, worship and the tabernacle
  5. Covenant in Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed thought

Module 3: Kingship in Israel

  1. From the judges to the first kings
  2. David, Jerusalem and the promise of a lasting house
  3. Solomon, the temple and the divided kingdom
  4. How Samuel and Kings tell the story: sources and purpose

Module 4: The Prophets, Exile and Restoration

  1. What a prophet was in Israel and in the ancient world
  2. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah: justice, loyalty and judgment
  3. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the fall of Jerusalem
  4. The return, Ezra, Nehemiah and the rebuilt temple
  5. How the prophetic books were formed: the debate over Isaiah and others

Module 5: Wisdom and Apocalyptic Writing

  1. Proverbs and the way of the wise
  2. Job and Ecclesiastes: wisdom that questions
  3. What apocalyptic writing is: Daniel and its setting
  4. Reading apocalyptic images responsibly

Module 6: Second Temple Judaism and the Development of Jewish Thought

  1. Persian, Greek and Maccabean periods
  2. Temple, synagogue and the main groups in Jewish life
  3. Development in Jewish thought: angels, resurrection, wisdom and law
  4. Sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus

Module 7: Messianic Expectation and the Shape of the Covenants

  1. Anointed ones in the Old Testament: king, priest, prophet
  2. Messianic texts in the prophets and psalms
  3. How Jews and Christians read the messianic texts
  4. The promise of a new covenant
  5. Mapping the development of covenant across the Old Testament

All courses

Program / Course 6: Old Testament Theology and History / Lesson 5.1

What you will learn

  • Describe what wisdom meant in ancient Israel and who the wise were.
  • Explain the idea that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
  • Read a proverb as a general observation and not a guaranteed promise.
  • Compare Proverbs with Egyptian wisdom and with later readings of Lady Wisdom.

The big idea

The book of Proverbs collects short sayings and longer poems about how to live well. It belongs to a wider tradition of wisdom in the ancient Near East, and one section closely resembles an Egyptian text. Its center is a claim that true wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. It speaks of wisdom as a woman who calls in the streets, and later Jews and Christians read her as the Torah or as Christ. Proverbs describe how life usually goes, and they are not promises that never fail.

Key terms

Wisdom (hokmah)
Skill in living: knowing how to act well in family, work, speech and community, grounded in respect for God.
Proverb (mashal)
A short saying that captures a general truth, often by comparison. The Hebrew word has a wider range than the English.
Fear of the Lord
Reverent awe and trust before God, which in Proverbs is the root of wisdom.
Parallelism
A feature of Hebrew poetry in which a second line repeats, contrasts or extends the first.
Lady Wisdom
The figure in Proverbs 1, 8 and 9 who speaks as a woman calling people to follow her. She is contrasted with Folly.
Instruction of Amenemope
An Egyptian wisdom text from the late second millennium BC with close parallels to Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22.
Deuterocanonical wisdom books
Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, accepted as Scripture by Catholic and Orthodox churches and not by Jews or most Protestants.

Background

In the ancient Near East, wisdom was a recognized kind of learning. Scribes in Egypt and Mesopotamia wrote collections of advice for young men entering public service. They taught manners, honesty, control of speech and respect for rulers. Israel had its wise people too, including counselors at court. Jeremiah 18:18 names the wise beside priests and prophets as one of the sources of guidance.

The book of Proverbs credits Solomon in its title (1:1), and also names Agur and Lemuel, and notes that men of King Hezekiah copied out proverbs of Solomon (25:1). The book was probably gathered over centuries and given its present shape after the exile, with the opening chapters as a preface. Scholars date the sections differently, and many hold that some sayings are very old.

Proverbs speaks to a young man, in the voice of a father, and also in the voice of Wisdom herself. It looks at the ordinary matters of life: work, money, friends, speech, marriage, anger and the choices that shape a character. Its ideal is a person who is both practical and devout.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The fear of the Lord

The motto of the book appears at 1:7: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Chapter 9 repeats it as the beginning of wisdom. This does not mean terror. It means a right relation to God that includes trust and obedience. It also means that wisdom is not merely cleverness. A clever person who ignores God is called a fool.

The claim ties wisdom to the rest of the Old Testament. The same God who made the world and spoke at Sinai is the source of the order that the wise try to observe. The wise person pays attention to creation and community to learn how to live, and the person of faith believes that this order comes from God.

Step 2: How proverbs work

A proverb is a general truth in compact form. Diligent hands tend to bring wealth, and the lazy tend to poverty (Proverbs 10:4). It is not a law of nature, and it is not a promise to each person. Proverbs placed side by side can seem to pull against each other: Answer not a fool according to his folly, says 26:4, and the next verse says, Answer a fool according to his folly. Readers have long understood that wisdom lies in knowing which saying fits which case.

This helps explain how the book fits with Job and Ecclesiastes. Proverbs describes the usual pattern, in which wise actions tend to bring good results. Those two books examine what happens when the pattern fails. Misreading a proverb as a guarantee leads to the mistaken idea that all suffering is punishment, a view Job challenges.

Step 3: Egyptian parallels

The section called the sayings of the wise in Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22 has close parallels with the Instruction of Amenemope, an Egyptian work in thirty chapters. Proverbs 22:20 speaks of thirty sayings, and several sayings about not robbing the poor and not moving old landmarks are close to the Egyptian text. Most scholars think that the Egyptian text is older, and that the Hebrew writer adapted it, giving it a new setting in the faith of Israel.

Some scholars question the direction of influence or the closeness of the match. The existence of the parallels does not reduce the book’s standing in Jewish or Christian tradition, which holds that the book is inspired as it stands. It shows that Israel’s wise were part of a shared culture of advice.

Step 4: Lady Wisdom and the woman of worth

In Proverbs 1 and 8, Wisdom stands at the city gate and calls to the simple. In 8:22 to 31, she says that the Lord possessed her in the beginning of his way and that she was beside him as a master workman when the heavens were established. The Hebrew verb in verse 22 can mean possessed, acquired or created, and the verse has been central in Christian debates about Christ. Many Christian writers, including Athanasius and Origen, read Wisdom as pointing to the Son. Jewish writers, such as the author of Sirach 24, identify Wisdom with the Torah.

The book closes with a poem on the capable woman (31:10 to 31), a figure of strength, industry and kindness. It is an acrostic, each line beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and in many Jewish homes it is sung on Friday night. The poem’s opening question, who can find a virtuous woman, introduces a portrait of wisdom in daily life.

  1. What does the phrase the fear of the Lord mean in Proverbs?
  2. Why can two proverbs seem to contradict each other, and how should a reader respond?
  3. What is the difference between a proverb and a promise?
  4. What do the parallels with Amenemope suggest about Israel’s wisdom?
  5. Who is Lady Wisdom, and how have Jewish and Christian readers understood her?
  6. What does the poem of the capable woman add to the book’s picture of wisdom?

Examples

A proverb read as a promise

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). Some parents take this as a guarantee, and feel crushed when a grown child leaves the faith. Most interpreters hold that the verse states a general tendency of good upbringing and not a law with no exceptions.

Two sayings about fools

Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5 advise opposite responses to a fool. The pair is placed together on purpose. One warns against being dragged down to the fool’s level, and the other against letting folly go unchallenged. Wisdom is the ability to tell which applies.

Moving the landmark

Both Proverbs 22:28 and the Egyptian text warn against moving ancient boundary stones, which marked a family’s land. In Israel this protected the inheritance of a family under the covenant, so the saying also touches on the law of the land.

Different perspectives

Jewish readers

Jewish tradition counts Proverbs among the Writings and ascribes it to Solomon, with Hezekiah’s men as editors. Rabbinic literature identifies Wisdom with the Torah, as Sirach 24 already does, and the woman of valor poem is sung at the Sabbath table.

Catholic readers

Catholic tradition reads Wisdom in Proverbs 8 as an image of the Son, the Word, and also as an image of Mary in the liturgy. The Church accepts Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon as Scripture and draws on them for moral teaching.

Orthodox readers

The Orthodox church reads Proverbs 8 in feasts of the Mother of God and of Christ, and uses the Greek word Sophia for wisdom. The cathedral of Hagia Sophia was named for the wisdom of God, understood as Christ.

Protestant readers

Protestants commonly read Proverbs for practical and moral guidance and for its pointer to Christ in chapter 8. Reformation writers debated the verb in 8:22, since Arian teachers had used it to say that the Son was created. They generally follow the early church in rejecting that conclusion.

Scholarly views

Scholars debate the dates of the sections, the extent of Egyptian influence, and whether wisdom arose in the royal court, the family or schools. Many hold that Proverbs 1 to 9 is the latest part and offers a theological frame for the older sayings.

Why it matters

Proverbs gives the Old Testament’s practical wisdom, and it shows that faith includes everyday decisions. Learning to read proverbs as general truths prevents harm: it keeps readers from using the book as a promise of success, or from using it to blame the suffering. It also prepares for the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, which test the proverbial view.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Proverbs promises that the righteous will always prosper.

Correction: Proverbs gives general patterns. Other books, and some verses within Proverbs itself, show that the righteous can suffer and the wicked prosper.

Misunderstanding: Proverbs is only common sense with no religious content.

Correction: The book places wisdom under the fear of the Lord, and many sayings mention God directly.

Misunderstanding: Solomon wrote every verse of Proverbs.

Correction: The book names other contributors and editors. Jewish and Christian traditions differ in how strictly they apply the title.

Misunderstanding: The Egyptian parallels show that Proverbs is not inspired.

Correction: Believers in each tradition have held that God inspires authors who use existing material. The parallels tell about the book’s sources, not about its status.

Knowledge check

What does Proverbs mean by the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom?

It means that right knowledge and good living begin with reverent trust in God, not with cleverness alone. The phrase in 1:7 and 9:10 ties wisdom to the covenant faith. A person who knows many facts but ignores God is still a fool in the book’s terms. Fear here means awe and obedience, not terror.

Why should a proverb not be read as a guarantee?

A proverb states a general truth that holds in many cases, not a law that holds in all. Proverbs themselves can be set side by side with seemingly opposite advice, as in 26:4 and 5. Wisdom is knowing which saying fits a situation. Job and Ecclesiastes show that suffering can fall on the righteous, so no proverb can be turned into a promise.

What is the relation between Proverbs and the Instruction of Amenemope?

Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22 has close parallels with the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope, including a reference to thirty sayings and shared advice about the poor and boundary stones. Most scholars think the Egyptian text came first and the Hebrew author adapted it, but the extent and direction of the influence are debated.

How have Jews and Christians understood Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 8?

Jewish writers such as Ben Sira identify her with the Torah, through which God’s wisdom is known. Christian writers, including Origen and Athanasius, read her as pointing to Christ, the Wisdom of God. Verse 22 raised a debate because its Hebrew verb can mean created, and the church rejected the reading that the Son was a creature.

Think it through

  1. Which proverb have you heard used as a promise, and how would you read it now?
  2. What does it mean to say that wisdom begins with reverence?
  3. How do you decide between two sayings that pull in opposite directions?
  4. Why might a collection of practical sayings belong in Scripture?

Independent assignment

Proverbs in context

In your own notebook, read Proverbs 1, 8 and 31. Choose six proverbs from chapters 10 to 15 and, for each, write one sentence on the general truth it states and one sentence on a case where it might not hold. Then write 200 to 300 words explaining how Proverbs relates to the fear of the Lord. Keep it for yourself.

Further study