Book of Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs (Template:Langx, Template:Transliteration; Template:Langx, Template:Transliteration; Template:Langx, "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is the second book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and a book in the Christian Old Testament. It is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon and his students.Template:Sfn When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX), it became (Template:Transliteration, "Proverbs"); in the Latin Vulgate, the title was —from which the English name is derived.

Proverbs is not merely an anthology but a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life that lasted for more than a millennium.Template:Sfn It is an example of Biblical wisdom literature and raises questions about values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and right conduct,Template:Sfn and its theological foundation is that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."Template:Sfn Wisdom is personified and praised for her role in creation; God created her before all else and gave order to chaos through her. As humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of life.Template:Sfn

The book of Proverbs is divided into sections: the initial invitation to acquire wisdom, another section focused mainly on contrasting the wise and the fool, and the third being moral discourses on various topics. Chapters 25–29 discuss justice, the wicked, and the rich and poor; chapter 30 introduces the "sayings of Agur" on creation and divine power.

Recent research on the book of Proverbs has taken two main approaches. Some scholars argue that different sections of the book originate from various periods, with chapters 1–9 and (30–)31 being the latest and final redaction dated to the late Persian or Hellenistic periods, while others focus on the book's received form, analyzing its overall meaning first.

Structure

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Scroll of the Book of Proverbs

The superscriptions divide the collections as follows:

• Proverbs 1–9: "Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel"
• Proverbs 10–22:16: "Proverbs of Solomon"
• Proverbs 22:17–24:22: "The Sayings of the Wise"
• Proverbs 24:23–34: "These Also are Sayings of the Wise"
• Proverbs 25–29: "These are Other Proverbs of Solomon that the Officials of King Hezekiah of Judah Copied"
• Proverbs 30: "The Words of Agur"
• Proverbs 31:1–9: "The Words of King Lemuel of Massa,Template:Efn Which his Mother Taught Him"
• Proverbs 31:10–31: the ideal wise woman (elsewhere called the "woman of substance").Template:Sfn

Contents

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Papyrus Bodmer VI, featuring a Coptic translation of Proverbs (4th/5th century AD)

"Proverb" is a translation of the Hebrew word mashal, but "mashal" has a wider range of meanings than the short, catchy saying implied by the English word. Thus, roughly half the book is made up of "sayings" of this type, while the other half consists of longer poetic units of various types. These include "instructions" formulated as advice from a teacher or parent addressed to a student or child, dramatic personifications of both Wisdom and Folly, and the "words of the wise" sayings, which are longer than the Solomonic "sayings" but shorter and more diverse than the "instructions."Template:Sfn

The first section (chapters 1–9) comprises an initial invitation to young men to take up the course of wisdom, ten "instructions", and five poems on personified Woman Wisdom.Template:Sfn Verses 1:1–7 constitute an introduction to the whole of this section. Proverbs 10:1–22:16, with 375 sayings, consists of two parts, the first part (10–14) contrasting the wise man and the fool (or the righteous and the wicked), the second (15–22:16) addressing wise and foolish speech.Template:Sfn Verse 22:17 opens ‘the words of the wise’, until verse 24:22, with short moral discourses on various subjects. An additional section of sayings which "also belong to the wise" follows in verses 24:23–34. Chapters 25–29, attributed to the editorial activity of "the men of Hezekiah", contrast the just and the wicked and broach the topic of rich and poor.Template:Sfn Chapter 30:1–4, the "sayings of Agur", introduces creation, divine power, and human ignorance.Template:Sfn Chapter 31, "the sayings of King Lemuel—an inspired utterance his mother taught him", describes a virtuous woman, a wife of noble character.

Composition

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Solomon writing Proverbs (Gustave Doré)

It is impossible to offer precise dates for the sayings in Proverbs, a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life that lasted for more than a millennium.Template:Sfn The title is traditionally derived from chapter 1:1, mishley Shelomoh ("Proverbs of Solomon"). This phrase is repeated in 10:1 and 25:1, indicating a focus on categorizing the content rather than attributing authorship.Template:Sfn

The book is an anthology made up of six discrete units. The Proverbs of Solomon section, chapters 1–9, was probably the last to be composed in the Persian or Hellenistic periods. This section has parallels to prior cuneiform writings. The second, chapters 10–22:16, carries the superscription "the proverbs of Solomon", which may have encouraged its inclusion in the Hebrew canon. The third unit, 22:17–24:22, is headed "bend your ear and hear the words of the wise". A large part of this section is a recasting of a second-millennium BCE Egyptian work, the Instruction of Amenemope, and may have reached the Hebrew author(s) through an Aramaic translation. Chapter 24:23 begins a new section and source with the declaration, "These too are from the wise". The next section, at chapter 25:1, has a superscription that the following proverbs were transcribed "by the men of Hezekiah", indicating at face value that they were collected in the reign of Hezekiah in the late 8th century BCE. Chapters 30 and 31 (the "words of Agur," the "words of Lemuel," and the description of the "ideal" woman and wife) are a set of appendices, quite different in style and emphasis from the previous chapters.Template:Sfn

The ”wisdom” genre was widespread throughout the ancient Near East, and reading Proverbs alongside the examples recovered from Egypt and Mesopotamia reveals the common ground shared by international wisdom.Template:Sfn The wisdom literature of Israel may have been developed in the family, the royal court, and houses of learning and instruction;Template:Sfn nevertheless, the overwhelming impression is of instruction within the family in small villages.Template:Sfn

Themes

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Excerpt from Proverbs 3 displayed at Portland International Jetport in Portland, Maine

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A page of the Book of Proverbs from a Bible from 1497

Along with the other examples of the biblical wisdom tradition – Job and Ecclesiastes and some other writings – Proverbs raises questions of values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and righteous conduct. The three retain an ongoing relevance for both religious and secular readers, Job and Ecclesiastes through the boldness of their dissent from received tradition, Proverbs in its worldliness and satiric shrewdness. Wisdom is as close as biblical literature comes to Greek philosophy, of which it was a contemporary; it shares with the Greeks an inquiry into values and reflections on the human condition, although there is no discussion of ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, and the other abstract issues raised by the Greeks.Template:Sfn

The rabbinic college almost excluded the Book of Proverbs from the Bible in the late first century. They did this because of its contradictions (the result of the book's origins as not just an anthology but an anthology of anthologies). The reader is told, for example, both to "not answer a fool according to his folly," according to 26:4, and to "answer a fool according to his folly", as 26:5 advises. More pervasively, the recurring theme of the initial unit (chapters 1–9) is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the following units are much less theological, presenting wisdom as a transmissible human craft, until with 30:1–14, the "words of Agur," we return once more to the idea that God alone possesses wisdom.Template:Sfn

"The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10 – the phrase implies submission to God's will).Template:Sfn Wisdom is praised for her role in creation ("God by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding, he established the heavens" – Proverbs 3:19). God created her before all else, and through her, he gave order to chaos ("When [God] established the heavens ... when he drew a circle on the face of the Deeps ... when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him" – Proverbs 8:27–31). Since humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of the religious life.Template:Sfn Wisdom, or the wise person, is compared and contrasted with foolishness or the fool, meaning one who is lacking in wisdom and uninterested in instruction, not one who is merely silly or playful (though see the words of Agur for a "fool" who has wisdom and could be seen as playful).Template:Sfn

For the most part, Proverbs offers a simplistic view of life with few grey areas: a life lived according to the rules brings reward, and life in violation of them is certain to bring disaster. In contrast, Job and Ecclesiastes appear to be direct contradictions of the simplicities of Proverbs, each in its own way all but dismissing the assumptions of the "wise".Template:Sfn Noteworthy also is the fact that the "mighty acts of God" (the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the Covenant between God and Israel, etc.) which make up Israel's history are completely or almost completely absent from Proverbs and the other Wisdom books: in contrast to the other books of the Hebrew Bible, which appeal to divine revelation for their authority ("Thus says the Lord!"), wisdom appeals to human reason and observation.Template:Sfn

Later interpretation and influence

Pre-Exilic (i.e., pre-586 BCE) Israelite religion worshipped Yahweh as the supreme deity despite the continued existence of subordinate servant-deities.Template:Sfn The post-Exilic writers of the Wisdom tradition developed the idea that Wisdom existed before creation and was used by God to create the universe:Template:Sfn "Present from the beginning, Wisdom assumes the role of master builder while God establishes the heavens, restricts the chaotic waters, and shapes the mountains and fields."Template:Sfn Borrowing ideas from Greek philosophersTemplate:Example needed who held that Reason bound the universe together, the Wisdom tradition taught that God's Wisdom, Word, and Spirit were the ground of cosmic unity.Template:Sfn Christianity, in turn adopted these ideas and applied them to Jesus: the Epistle to the Colossians calls Jesus "... image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation ...", while the Gospel of John identifies him with the creative Word ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God").Template:Sfn

In the 4th century, when Christianity was caught up in heresies and still developing the creeds that would define its beliefs, Proverbs 8:22 was used both to support and refute the claims of the Arians. The Arians, assuming that Jesus could be equated with the "Wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), argued that the Son, like Wisdom, was "created" and therefore subordinate to the Creator. Their opponents, who argued that the relevant Hebrew word should be translated as "begot", won the debate, and the Nicene Creed declared that the Son was "begotten, not made"—meaning that God and Jesus were consubstantial.Template:Sfn

See also

• "As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly"
• Proverbs 30
• Proverbs 31

Bibliography

Further reading

• Crenshaw, James L. "Book of Proverbs", The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1992
• Dockery, David S. (general ed.), Holman Bible Handbook, Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, 1992
• Lasor, William Sanford, Hubbard, David Allan, & Bush, Frederic Wm., Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament, 1996
• Murphy, Roland E., Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. Grand Rapids, 1981
• Steinmann, Andrew, "Proverbs 1–9 as a Solomonic Composition", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 43, no. 4

External links

• Introduction to the Book of Proverbs Template:Webarchive a Forward Movement publication
• Template:Librivox book – Various versions

Online translations of the Book of Proverbs

• Jewish translations:
  • Mishlei – Proverbs (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
• Christian translations:
  • Bible Gateway 35 languages/50 versions
  • Unbound Bible 100+ languages/versions at Biola University