Day #155

Sermon - Audio
Proverbs 1-3 - Audio
Proverbs 1-3- Reading

Daily Insights - Please Comment

Proverbs: The Essentials

• To rightly interpret the book of Proverbs there are several things that we need to keep in mind:
• The theme of Proverbs is how to negotiate life in God’s good but fallen world. All the Proverbs point us in that direction.
• The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. We need to be in right relationship with God, a relationship where we honor and reverence him. Without this right relationship there is no wisdom.
• Wisdom has created the world with both physical and moral boundaries. These boundaries are sometimes pictured as the sea having boundaries which it cannot go beyond. To live rightly and wisely we need to live within those boundaries. Further, we can only direct our life in the right direction when we know and live within these boundaries.
• The goal of Proverbs is to help us build a whole and complete moral framework for our lives, not to just set down Proverbs to be memorized (although memorizing Proverbs can be a very good thing).
• The New Testament often equates Wisdom with Jesus Christ. We read in 1 Corinthians 1.22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
• Wisdom is practical knowledge in dealing with life. The Bible uses the word wisdom in other contexts to talk about the skill of an artist (Ex. 28.3), the skill of a ruler (Jer 50.35), even the still of understanding the created world (1 Kings 4.33). We need to understand Wisdom in this context throughout the book of Proverbs.
• While Proverbs is the Old Testament wisdom book, this type of literature can be found throughout the Bible. There are wisdom Psalms and in the New Testament the Sermon on the Mount may be called “Wisdom Literature” since Jesus at the end summarizes his teaching talking about a wise man and a foolish man. The book of James is also considered by many to be wisdom literature.
• The fact that God puts wisdom literature in the Bible teaches us that he is very concerned with our living rightly in his world.

A Few notes on the first three chapters

• 1.3: Prudence is an important idea in Proverbs. The prudent person is able to assess a situation, take what they have learned and apply it to come up with the right solution, teaching , etc., for that situation.
• 1.6: “Sayings of the riddles of the wise” The book of Proverbs has, at times, Proverbs that directly contradict one another. When one understands the riddles it means that you understand when which Proverb needs to be applies to a certain situation. In terms from our own North American proverbial tradition to which of your children do you say, “Look before you leap” and to which do you say, “He who hesitates is lost”? Knowing the situation and knowing our children we know which wise saying to apply. When we understand the book of Proverbs we will know which sayings to apply to which situation.
• 1.7: The “fool” is not the same as a simple person. A simply person can be taught, a fool is someone who rejects wisdom.
• 1.8-19 introduces us to some key themes that will be repeated throughout the first nine chapters. These include making wise choices, the reality that evil leads to destruction and death, to hold on to what one has been taught by the wise, and that true victory and life come only to those who follow the path of wisdom.
• 1.20 introduces us to Lady Wisdom who makes her opening speech calling the simple, the mockers, and the fools to heed her words.
• 1.20: We move briefly away from the instruction of the son to a general call of wisdom in the city square. The call of wisdom in this place shows that wisdom is involved in all of life, not just in what many would term “spiritual things”.
• Proverbs 2 is one sentence in Hebrew. It uses a letter of the Hebrew alphabet at the beginning of each phrase to bring its point across concerning the completeness of Wisdom (the entire Hebrew alphabet is used). It is a masterful poem.
• 2.1-4 teaches the process of how we attain the fear of the LORD (see verse 5) and how we attain a life where we follow the good path for those around us (see verse 9). These first four verses, then, show us how to attain a love for God and a love for our neighbor.
• 2.11: the idea that “discretion will watch over you and understanding guard you” must not be seen as some mystical thing--as if discretion and understanding are outside of a person. Rather, they are inside him/her because he/she has spent a lifetime stretching out to obtain them. In a New Testament context we would say that the Holy Spirit calls us to remember the wisdom we have learned so that we keep walking right paths, but even here the Holy Spirit draws on the work we have done (see Philippians 2.12ff).
• 2.16: Continuing the idea of understanding and discretion rescuing us we find that we will also be rescued from the “strange” or “forbidden” woman. Unfortunately, the NIV interprets the Hebrew words “zar isha” as “adulterous” rather than the literal “strange woman”. The idea of “strange” is connected with something that God does not allow or has not commanded.
• 2.20: This verse speaks of being part of a community of good and the righteous people (both good and righteous are plural). Those who pursue wisdom will find themselves part of the kind of community that surrounds them with people who are living the ways of life and so they will experience life.
• 3.1: An on-going theme of Proverbs and Psalms is the necessity to both put in our heart and take to heart God’s word and wisdom. The wonderful picture in this verse is that the parent knows God’s wisdom so well that he/she can proclaim that his/her teaching (torat cf. torah) and commandments (mitzvot) are in line with God’s teaching. This parent has done exactly what they are calling on the son to do: put God’s word in their heart and taken it to heart.
• 3.2: “bring you prosperity” NIV is actually “bring you shalom”. Shalom is a much broader concept than prosperity including a life of joy, peace, and wholeness.
• 3.3: Proverbs 3.3 calls on the son to be a faithful follower of God’s covenant, to make it the center of his life.
• 3.5: The covenant theme again lies behind this. We trust God’s covenant way of life with all our heart rather than trusting ourselves. But there is more than this. For trust is rooted not only in covenant but in creation. God as creator has set up the way the world works. This way is reflected in his general ways life for all as well as his specific covenantal regulations for his people.
• 3.8: “health and nourishment” can be misinterpreted into a gospel of health and wealth. Health and nourishment means living a style of life that brings one a sense of wholeness (shalom). Such a life can be one of wealth or poverty, physical health or physical struggle.
• 3.16: This verse challenges one of the Egyptian gods. Ma’at, the god of world order and justice, is said to hold life in one hand and wealth and honor in the other. In this verse the writer of Proverbs tells that it is not Ma’at but Wisdom who holds these things and in a moment he will blow Ma’at out of the water by declaring that Wisdom is also the one through whom God created to the world.