Biblical Theology XVI: Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs is presented as the teaching of a royal father (and sometimes mother) to a son who might be king. The thrust of the book, and why it, perhaps, remains so relevant to the reader in any generation is that it focuses on not only how to be a good ruler, but how to be a noble person, and that the beginning of becoming a wise person is the fear of God (i.e., the recognition of God’s supreme authority). Proverbs are practical examples of how the law works out in every day situations. It is where the Torah meets life in all of its situations. Hence, law and wisdom are sisters, one conveying the ideal and one conveying the outworking in everyday life of that ideal; and the grounding of whether one listens to these ideals and lives accordingly has much to do with what life teachers to whom one listens (i.e., God or the devil, wise parents or the culture of the wicked world). The prologue sets the book’s purpose as follows.

The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

² for gaining wisdom and instruction;
    for understanding words of insight;
³ for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
    doing what is right and just and fair;
⁴ for giving prudence to those who are simple,
    knowledge and discretion to the young—
⁵ let the wise listen and add to their learning,
    and let the discerning get guidance—
⁶ for understanding proverbs and parables,
    the sayings and riddles of the wise.

⁷ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
    but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Theology:  The Book of Proverbs sets up a contrast of tutors in the chapters that make up the prologue. The father (and sometimes mother) is placed in contrast to the wicked men forms the contrast on the human level, whereas wisdom personified as a woman that comes from God versus the whore who comes from death and the grave, and beckons young men to give their days to the evil one portrays the contrast on a spiritual level.  To seek wisdom, then, is to seek the Creator God and to honor one’s wise father and mother, but to do what is stupid is to seek death and chaos. Proverbs, therefore, continues the understanding of the Old Testament that those who fulfill the role of the image will be creational in both their larger and smaller decisions in daily life.

Ethics: An ethical contrast is created between the fool and the wise man, so that the fool is the wicked man in the book and the wise man is the righteous man. What the book conveys, therefore, is that there is more to being a righteous man and a wicked man than simply how one responds to the explicit law in the Bible. Instead, if one is a righteous man, he will conduct his life in a way that seeks after and employs wisdom in his daily decisions. Likewise, if one is a wicked man, he will evidence this in the foolishness of his life decisions that go far beyond just his response to the explicit legal commands in the Bible. As a side note, the book notes the pattern of a noble man’s life and ends with the pattern of a noble woman’s life, as if to say that one needs to become a noble man before he seeks out a noble woman. In any case, the book relates that those who would be God’s image will seek to be in harmony with His creative activity, and since He orders the world in wisdom, His people are to order their lives in accordance with it.