Proverbs: the wisdom of fearing the LORD

About the book

The book opens, "These are the proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel" (Proverbs 1:1). The Hebrew word for proverb, mashal (מָשָׁל), can also mean a comparison or likeness: a saying short enough to remember and sharp enough to make you think. Kings records that "Solomon’s wisdom was greater than that of all the men of the East, greater than all the wisdom of Egypt" (1 Kings 4:30), and that he composed three thousand proverbs.

The book says itself that it gathers several collections. Proverbs of Solomon begin again at chapters 10 and 25, and the second group are proverbs "copied by the men of Hezekiah king of Judah" (Proverbs 25:1); from 22:17 come ‘the words of the wise’, and chapters 30 and 31 hold the words of Agur and of King Lemuel. The church has long received most of the book as wisdom from Solomon. Many scholars, among them evangelicals, who stress the authority of Scripture and the telling of the gospel, hold that Solomon is the fountain of this wisdom, that it was gathered again in Hezekiah's day (about 700 BC), and that the words of Agur and Lemuel completed the book.

Many other scholars think the collections grew over several centuries, often taking chapters 1–9 as the latest part, with the book finished after the exile. Scholars of both views note that a passage after 22:17 closely resembles an ancient Egyptian book of wisdom, and see Israel's wisdom in conversation with its neighbours'. The map under the Jesus tab sets Proverbs in Solomon's time, the united monarchy (about 1050–930 BC).

How it unfolds

In chapters 1–9 a father pleads, "Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction" (Proverbs 1:8), and Wisdom, pictured as a woman, "calls out in the street" (Proverbs 1:20). In chapter 9 Wisdom builds her house and spreads a feast, while "The woman named Folly is loud" (Proverbs 9:13) and calls from her own door: choose one way or the other. From chapter 10 come sayings of a line or two, many of them setting the second half against the first with a ‘but’. The closing poem on the wife of noble character begins each verse with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Key passages

The book's motto stands at its head:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Proverbs 1:7

To fear the LORD is more than to be afraid: it is to honour him and live before him. The motto returns at the close of chapters 1–9, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10), and the book ends with "a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised" (Proverbs 31:30). So the wisdom of Proverbs is more than good advice: it is a life of trust in God.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Proverbs speaks of everyday things: words and work, money and friends, marriage and children. But a proverb tells how God's world generally works; it is not a promise for every case. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6) says what a parent's teaching usually bears, and John Wesley glosses its "depart" as "Not easily and ordinarily" Wesley. "Do not answer a fool according to his folly" (Proverbs 26:4) stands right beside "Answer a fool according to his folly" (Proverbs 26:5): wisdom is knowing which fits the hour. Job, where the righteous suffer, and Ecclesiastes, with its vanity under the sun, keep Proverbs in balance.

The book and Christ

Jesus said of himself, "now One greater than Solomon is here" (Matthew 12:42). Paul calls Christ "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), the one "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3).

In Proverbs 8 Wisdom sings that she was with God when he made the world: "Then I was a skilled craftsman at His side, and His delight day by day" (Proverbs 8:30). The New Testament does not quote this chapter, but since it says that in Christ "all things were created" (Colossians 1:16), the church has long read this Wisdom as Christ. Matthew Henry writes, "The Son of God declares himself to have been engaged in the creation of the world" Matthew Henry. Many interpreters today read the chapter as a poem that pictures God's wisdom as a person, a wisdom that has come to us fully in Christ.

The chapter was once at the heart of a great debate. Wisdom says, "The LORD created me as His first course" (Proverbs 8:22), as the Greek Old Testament also has it, though the Hebrew verb can mean ‘possessed’. In the fourth century Arius took the verse as proof that the Son was made, and at Nicaea the church confessed him begotten, not made (Nicaea: is the Son truly God?, in the theology course).

Reading it

Proverbs has thirty-one chapters, so a chapter a day takes a month; begin with Proverbs 1. Read chapters 1–9 as continuous teaching. From chapter 10, read a chapter slowly and choose one saying to carry through the day.

The two halves set against each other by ‘but’ are the parallelism met in the Psalms: weigh one line against the other and the meaning comes clear. Then go on to Ecclesiastes.

Practice