Some jottings on reading Proverbs as Christians

At Trinity Church Scarborough, we're preaching through Proverbs throughout the autumn.It's not a book I've ever studied in any detail, so I've taken a step back, read a few things others have written, and collected thoughts I've had over the years as I've read through Proverbs as part of my own personal Bible reading. I wanted somewhere to jot down the things I've learnt, so I can refer to it later, and thought this public space would be good as it may help others too.

Things I've Read

I'm sure there's much more I could have read. But these have all been helpful in their own way.

• The chapter on Proverbs in Mark Dever's book The Message of the Old Testament, a write-up of a sermon series he did preaching each week on the entirety of a single book of the Bible.
• The chapter on Proverbs in The Introduction to the Old Testament by Ray Dillard and Temper Longman III.
• A short and accessible commentary on Proverbs by Graeme Goldsworthy entitled The Tree of Life, published by the Anglican Information Office in Sydney Australia. It's currently out of print, and there are very few second hand copies out there. I haven't got a copy to compare if it's broadly the same, but it looks like there may be a new edition.
• The Gospel in Wisdom by Graeme Goldsworthy, which is now published as part of a trilogy of books bound into a single volume. This goes over much of the same ground as The Tree of Life, but covers much more ground and elaborates considerably. So The Tree of Life is very accessible to introduce you to his thinking, and The Gospel in Wisdom is him showing you his workings out. Both are helpful.

The Jottings

So, here then are the things I think Christians need to bear in mind as they approach Proverbs. This is not exhaustive (there's much more that could be said). They're not in order of importance, and (while there's some flow of thought here) there's no real logical flow. They are more a series of things to have in mind. I could have called them some theses on the book of Proverbs.

1. Proverbs is in the Old Testament. Jesus endorsed the Old Testament as the Word of God. So for Christians, who follow Jesus, Proverbs is part of the canon of Scripture.
2. Proverbs is Christian Scripture. Jesus said in Luke 24:27 that the whole Old Testament testifies to him. So as we read Proverbs, we expect to meet Jesus there, as we would in every other part of the Old Testament.
3. It helps to remember our doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. When we say that all Scripture is God-breathed, we mean that every word (as originally written) is what God wants it to be, and that what it communicates is what God wishes to communicate. How you get there varies considerably. Some parts of Scripture were literally dictated by God, but that is far from the only mode of inspiration. Writers recorded historic events using their own creative story-telling skills; people wrote down dreams and visions; people crafted poems and prayers. Yet, for all the creativity and human influence on the text, God oversaw the whole writing and editing process so that the finished text is exactly as he wants it.
4. In particular, proverbs are short pithy sayings that encapsulate what people have learnt about how to survive and thrive in the world. People succeed (or make mistakes) and come up with ways to pass the lessons on to others. In time, the experiences that led to those lessons get forgotten but the saying lives on. This gives rise to sayings like "Pride comes before a fall" (conflating the two halves of Proverbs 16:18), along with extra-biblical proverbs like "Still waters run deep" and "more haste, less speed".
5. Human beings have been reflecting on how to live well in the world, and finding ways to pass this wisdom on to others, since the Garden of Eden. Each proverb may well be the result of the experiences of many different people, with the actual saying refined and honed as it is passed down the generations. At some point, someone decided it should be included in a collection of sayings, and so it made its way into the book of Proverbs. That whole process of reflecting, passing on, honing, refining, writing down is how the human dimension of inspiration works for the individual proverbs in Proverbs.
6. At the same time, the quest for wisdom has not always been done well. The invitation to "be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5) was an invitation to make decisions on how to live that bypass God's revealed word. At the heart of the fall was the choice to pursue a wisdom that is not anchored in God's revelation, rather than seeking to apply what God has revealed of himself. Romans 1:18-32 describes our sin in the same way. Seeking wisdom is a universal human experience. Proverbs presents us with the choice: Will we do this in response to God's gracious revelation, or reject that in defiance of him?
7. The book of Proverbs divides roughly into two halves. Chapters 1 to 9 contain primarily blocks of wisdom teaching. Chapters 10 to 31 contain primarily short pithy sayings ("proverbs", with a small "p"), most of which are two-line sayings. This is not exact. Chapters 1-9 contains some proverbs ("The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction", Proverbs 1:7). Chapters 10-31 contain some longer-form teaching blocks (such as Proverbs 22:17-21).
8. Proverbs 1:1-7 seems to be a preface for the book as a whole, telling us why the book of Proverbs was written, who it is designed to help, and how.
9. According to that preface, the book is for giving prudence, instruction, understanding, guidance, wisdom and insight. It will do this for the "simple", paralleled to "the young" — those who do not yet have wisdom in the world. However, Proverbs 1:5 says it will also do this for "the wise" and "the discerning"; even those who are already wise have more to learn, and Proverbs will help.
10. Proverbs 1:1 opens by telling us these are "the proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel". Superficially, this gives the impression Solomon wrote this book. As already noted, at best he compiled and wrote it down, rather than coming up with every proverb himself. However we need to note that Proverbs 30:1 introduces a section written by someone called "Agur son of Jakeh", and Proverbs 31:1 a section written by "King Lemuel". Those are probably not Israelite names, so not every proverb comes from Solomon himself and some even come from outside Israel. Proverbs 25:1 has king Hezekiah compiling proverbs from Solomon's era. Hezekiah lived about 250 years after Solomon, so the final editing of the book of Proverbs cannot have been done by Solomon himself. We must conclude that the opening line does not identify Solomon as the author of the whole book, or as its editor. Rather, he wrote down more of it than any other author, and it is associated with the kind of wisdom that he exemplified.
11. Solomon was renowned for his wisdom. After acceding to the throne, his number one request of God is for wisdom (1 Kings 3:9). This is immediately demonstrated as he's able to resolve a dispute between two prostitutes over whose baby has just died (1 Kings 3:16-28). 1 Kings 4:29-34 gushes with praise at his wisdom, with language that echoes the covenant to Abraham ("as measureless as the sand on the seashore"), suggesting a wise king is the pinnacle of God's covenant blessings for his people. His wisdom included writing 3000 proverbs, and included knowledge of the natural world (a point to which we'll return). People from other nations came to hear him, including the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1-13) whose expectations were exceeded.
12. The book of Proverbs does mention God, but does not explicitly tie itself into the storyline of God's covenant dealings with his people in the Old Testament. There is no mention of the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, the temple, or of Israel's kings (apart from "Solomon son of David" in Proverbs 1:1, "Solomon" in Proverbs 10:1; Proverbs 25:1, and "Hezekiah" in Proverbs 25:1).
13. Much of Proverbs is to do with how to live, in very practical ways, in the many challenges of life. This shows that a life lived for God concerns how we live in every area, not just the religious areas of life, and not just the big decisions. One contribution of the book of Proverbs shows that wise living touches even the smallest details of life, and goes much deeper than adhering to the explicit laws God gives us.
14. The fact that this wisdom teaching can be addressed without using explicitly religious language shows that faithful living before God is about the framework within which we make our decisions, and does not require us to describe life piously in order to live in a Christian way.
15. Compare these two passages from the first two chapters. (i) "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7). (ii) "My son, if you accept my words, … turning your ear to wisdom, … then you will understand the fear of the Lord" (Proverbs 2:1-5). (i) If you want to get wisdom, start with fearing God. (ii) When you are wise, that will lead to the fear of the Lord. Put another way: Fear of the Lord leads to wisdom, and wisdom leads you to fear God. Both are true.
16. If wisdom flows from the fear of the Lord, we need to understand what "the fear of the Lord" is if we are to understand the wisdom task Proverbs sets. We note firstly that "the Lord" is his covenant name, Yhwh or Yahweh or Jehovah, revealed in Exodus 3:14 and Exodus 6:2-3. So the key to wisdom is to be rightly related to the one true God as a member of his covenant people. The rest of Proverbs may not draw on covenant or religious language explicitly (for reasons already noted), but without a covenant framework in place Proverbs will not lead you on the path of true wisdom.
17. As well as noting the covenant language of God being "the Lord", we need to unpack "fear" of the Lord as the foundation of Proverbs-wisdom. Fearing God, in the Bible, does not mean being frightened of him, but more to do with reverence that respects God and treats him for who he is. In the Old Testament, the people learn to fear the Lord in response to his deliverance (Exodus 14:31), then grow in fear as God gives them his laws so they can live as his people (Deuteronomy 4:10). You learn to fear the Lord as he delivers you, and then speaks to teach you how to live for him. This is the foundational step to the path of wisdom.
18. We've seen that the proverbs within Proverbs concern the nitty gritty of life, decisions at a level of detail that God's laws do not usually prescribe. The people of God need to work out their salvation in fear and trembling, living out the whole of life as the redeemed people of God. The laws gave them hard and fast rules to keep, and in a sense they had to learn obedience to those before the need arose to fill in the gaps created by those laws. As they brought up their children, the most urgent need was to pass on God's story of redemption (Deuteronomy 6:20-25) and his laws (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).
19. At the same time, the pursuit of wisdom would have begun from the earliest days. We find human history being condensed into proverbial sayings as early as shortly after the flood (Genesis 10:9). This is why Solomon was the collector, not the sole author, of wisdom teaching. However, as already noted, Solomon was the wise man par excellence. It's no accident that he emerged at this point in Israel's history. Once Israel had their land and their laws, and once the transient tabernacle turned into a stone temple, all the solid structures of their relationship with God were built. At that point, to continue maturing in living out their relationship with him, there would need to be a growth in wisdom. God gave Solomon the wisdom he needed to lead Israel through this next stage in her growth.
20. Wisdom is about how to make sense of the world. This includes learning how the world works. This is where Solomon's taxonomy of the animal kingdom comes in: He studied animals and plants and worked out the patterns, and that is part of his wisdom. This includes learning how the moral world works, observing that certain patterns of behaviour lead to life going well or falling apart. However wisdom is about more than understanding. It is practical knowledge, learning how to live well. We become wise as we understand how the world works, so that we can live well within it.
21. Proverbs are not laws. Wisdom is tied into the need to think. The opening chapters of Proverbs portray wisdom both as the gift of God and as something we should actively seek and pursue. The wisdom of Proverbs is for Israel in her maturity, as God leads her to go beyond following set rules to seeking out the way to live to please him in the world he has made. God wants to relate to his people as adults; wise living is not about being told our every next step, but learning how to make good decisions.
22. This means that Proverbs will work on our hearts by teaching us how to think. Yes, there will be individual proverbs in Proverbs that resonate with certain life situations. If that were the book's sole contribution, most of it would be irrelevant most of the time. Instead, the book models for us how to look at life, and how to study ways to live as God's children in the complex details of life.
23. Proverbs are not to be absolutised. The most vivid illustration of this is to compare Proverbs 26:5 with Proverbs 26:6. There is wisdom in correcting a fool, and there is wisdom in remaining silent. Wise living involves being aware of both those things, and working out which to apply when. Goldsworthy tells of a comic from his childhood featuring a regular strip starring an academic, Bookworm Basil. Basil concluded from "still waters run deep" that fast flowing waters must necessarily be shallow with disastrous results.
24. Similarly, when Proverbs gives consequences for our actions, these are general observations about how life works rather than hard and fast laws of consequence on a short timescale. To illustrate: Proverbs 3:9-10 says, "honour the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim with new wine". Is it always the case that giving God your firstfruits will lead to an immediate overflow of physical reserves? No. Is it generally true that this is how life works, especially when considered on a long (even eternal) timescale. Yes.
25. The book of Proverbs needs to be read against the backdrop of the book of Job. Amongst many other things, Job shows what goes wrong if you read the kind of wisdom found in Proverbs and apply it in an absolute or immediate way. For all that wisdom can be mined, God's ways remain inscrutable. Indeed, if you read Proverbs carefully, you'll find plenty of teaching that wise living involves remaining humble before God.
26. The book of Proverbs needs to be read against the backdrop of the story of Jesus. We'll return to this at some length, but Job as the righteous sufferer prefigures Jesus. You cannot read Proverbs 3:9-10 in a way that suggests the order of the world has fallen apart when the only truly righteous one dies on a Roman cross.
27. The short-form proverbs in chapters 10ff are not arranged thematically. There is some grouping by theme, but far from having all the proverbs on money, work or family life in the same place. Constructing a preaching series on Proverbs is hard, and many preachers opt for a thematic approach. This isn't necessarily wrong, but we need to note this is not how the editor has chosen to arrange the material. Possibly the reason is that life does not come to us in neat compartments. We don't have a season of life where we need wisdom on money, and then a different season where wisdom on family is needed. Instead, the challenges of daily life are complex, throwing issues at us on many levels in many areas of life, all at once. This does not solve how to divide the book of Proverbs into a preaching series, but we lose something of its power if we simplify its message into compartmentalised topics.
28. One particular focus in the proverbs themselves is to do with our relationships, which are clearly central to wise living. In particular, family relationships of marriage and parenting get much attention. There are many warnings in the opening chapters against adultery.
29. In chapters 1-9, wisdom is personified as a woman. The book of Proverbs contains much wisdom on the themes of marriage, relationships and family. The book ends with a deliberate acrostic poem (Proverbs 31:10-31) extolling the "wife of noble character". To many readers, it's obvious that this brings together many of the themes on marriage within the book, and it does. However it is also possible that this is a portrait of "lady wisdom", and the book ends with a reminder that to find wisdom is to have something worth more than fine rubies. Proverbs 31:10-31 is an epilogue, to mirror the prologue of Proverbs 1:1-7.
30. As already noted, most of Proverbs 10-31 sounds abstract, as if it does not need the context of God's covenant with him people, and the foundation of "the fear of the Lord" is one key perspective to hold. Another key perspective to note is that all the individual proverbs flow out of the broader instruction found in Proverbs 1-9. The climax of this introductory teaching is Proverbs 9, that contrasts the invitations of Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. The people are being asked to choose whether they will live their lives on the path of Wisdom, leading to life, or on the path of Folly, leading to death. This means Proverbs is essentially an exposition of Deuteronomy 30:11-20. "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life." (Deuteronomy 30:19). As Paul shows in Romans 10, this is the invitation of the gospel. We must decide whether we will live on the road to life or the road to death, and Proverbs shows that every small decision is part of that choice. Daily life comprises lots of tiny yet complex choices, each of which presents a decision to follow Christ or to reject his ways. The individual proverbs may sound abstract and timeless, but they are very much rooted in the call to be the people of God.
31. Most of what has been said so far is not explicitly Christian. A faithful Jew, living under the old covenant, would agree with these principles for reading Proverbs. However, as noted (point 2), we need to read Proverbs as Christian Scripture. Some writers start with the theme of Jesus and wisdom, and then turn to Proverbs itself. I'm happy to note general principles on Proverbs first, because as Christians the Old Testament does not say something different, or do something different, from what it originally said and did. However Jesus fills the Old Testament full (he fulfils it), so we must consider how this old covenant book is transformed by him.
32. The place to start is with Jesus the wise man. After Joseph and Mary return home having met Simeon and Anna, Luke records that Jesus "grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom" (Luke 2:40). When Jesus is accidentally left behind in the temple at the age of 12. The teachers were "amazed at his understanding and his answers". Again, after they return home, "Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52). This latter verse is probably an allusion to Proverbs 3:4. From a young age, Jesus grew in wisdom (according to his human nature).
33. As an adult, people continue to be astonished at his wisdom. As he taught in Capernaum, "many who heard him were amazed. 'Where did this man get these things?' they asked. 'What's this wisdom that has been given him?'" (Mark 6:2). Later, the crowds sought a miraculous sign from him, and he chastised them for failing to respond to the light they already had. This led to: "The Queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom; and now something greater than Solomon is here" (Luke 11:31). We've seen Solomon was the pinnacle of Israelite wisdom, and the author of Kings cannot overstate him; now one wiser than Solomon has come.
34. We saw that being wise is all about our relationships, living rightly related to God and those around us. Wisdom then extends to understanding the world and so living rightly within it. Jesus is the only truly wise man to have ever lived.
35. We saw that true wisdom is living out the fear of the Lord, applying God's redemption and revelation to the choices of daily life. In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus tells a parable of two builders, one of whom was wise and the other was foolish, echoing the basic choice presented in the book of Proverbs. Strikingly, the wise one represents the person who "hears these words of mine and puts them into practice". Unsurprisingly, the call to live your life in response to God's deliverance becomes a call to live in the light of the coming of Jesus, and to live out his teaching.
36. In 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, Paul shows how a gospel which centres on the death of Jesus looks weak to Jews and foolish to Gentiles schooled in philosophy. They want a message to make sense of the world which is intellectually sophisticated. Instead, Paul preached that a crucified man is our only hope. Therefore (1 Corinthians 2:1-5) he did not attempt to sound clever, but simply trusted that God's power is at work through Jesus "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24). The quest, dating back to Eden, to make sense of the world God has placed us in and of the life God has given us, terminates with Christ crucified. Ultimately, the wise life is a life rightly related to him.
37. 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 takes this a stage further, by saying that Jesus "has become for us wisdom from God, that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption". If Jesus is the only wise man to have ever lived, then our wisdom falls short. The New Testament teaches that, by faith-union with Jesus, our guilt becomes his and his righteousness becomes ours. That includes wisdom. By being "in Christ", his wisdom becomes ours by faith. Even though we frequently make foolish decisions, because we are in Christ (the wisdom of God) we are reckoned as truly wise by God. This is a further reason why the path to wisdom is first and foremost to relate to Jesus through the gospel of his death and resurrection.
38. This ensures that we can read the whole of Proverbs as a message of grace. It is not a series of good advice, offered in the hope that we can somehow make ourselves wise and so succeed. It is instructions to those who are given the gift of wisdom by God's kindness, in Christ, so that we can learn to live out this wisdom in practice.
39. Colossians 2:1-5 says something very similar. Paul wants the Colossians to "know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge". Others may try to "deceive you by fine-sounding arguments" (false wisdom that bypasses Christ), but they need to "continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught", rejecting "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition … rather than on Christ" (Colossians 2:6-7).
40. All of this teaching of Jesus then drives us back to re-read the book of Proverbs. Having built the final piece of the structure of old covenant religion (the temple), Solomon the wise teacher gathered many wise sayings so that the people of old could live in the fear of the Lord. Jesus has now come, and is in his own body the new temple (John 2:21); he is wiser than Solomon as a teacher and the only person truly living out the wisdom Solomon anticipated. As New Testament believers, we know God through Jesus, and then come to him as the greater Solomon to be gifted God's wisdom. We live our whole lives, in all their complex detail, as part of the quest to make sense of life through the lens of the gospel, and day by day to choose life. Proverbs will give us many specific pieces of wisdom to equip us for this task; more than that, it shows us how to go about learning to think for ourselves how to live as the people of God on the path to life.