I’ve never had to teach Proverbs before, and I admit it looks pretty daunting. It feels important to come to some common agreements about how to interpret Proverbs before we jump in.

 

First of all, what section are we in?

• Proverbs 1-9 start with Proverbs 1:1:

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel… So that section was proverbs of King Solomon.

• Proverbs 10:1 starts again with The proverbs of Solomon.  However, these seem to be simply a collection of the wise one-liners, so to speak, that were collected while Solomon was king. For example, in my mind’s eye, I picture him passing judgment on a foolish son, then that evening, penning Proverbs 10:1.  As such, most of these verses don’t seem to stick together very well, that is, each wise saying pretty much stands alone.
• Chapters 25-29 start with the inscription (Proverbs 25:1) that These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.  So basically more of the same, they just weren’t in the “first edition” of Proverbs.
• Chapter 30 is the wise sayings of Agur the son of Jakeh. The oracle. (Proverbs 30:1).
• Chapter 31 is The word of King Lemuel. An oracle his mother taught him. (Proverbs 31:1).

 

Context and how to interpret a Proverb:

• To properly understand and apply one of these wise sayings we will be studying for the next 6 months, I think it’s crucial to remember when and to whom these Proverbs were written.
• I think it’s pretty self-explanatory that Solomon was the author, and the book was written to Old Testament Jews.
• God gave Solomon unmatched wisdom, and we know these Proverbs are part of Scripture. So we can safely take them as truth.  (It is true, that in his later years, Solomon somehow turned his back on Wisdom.)
• God’s covenant with the Old Testament Jews I believe was very different from our New Testament dispensation.  God promised physical blessings and prosperity as his portion of the covenant in exchange for the obedience and undivided loyalty of the Israelites. Most of the narrative portions of the OT graphically illustrate this time and time again.  A graphic example is David and Saul’s conflict with Goliath, or the Philistines in general. However, in the NT, I see very little support for physical prosperity (I’m not saying none!).
• A crucial task in interpreting and applying Proverbs is to figure out how this wise saying applies to the NT age.  This is a major premise of Anabaptism–that we give precedence to the way of Jesus where it differs from the OT!!!
• Gary Miller, one of my ministers from Hutchinson, used to say something to the effect that a Proverb is more of a generality about how life should work rather than a definitive statement about how it always works.  I think this concept is very helpful when you look at Proverbs.  Additionally, they tend to just show one side of a coin, but if you put several proverbs together, you might get a more complete picture.
  • For example: Proverbs 10:4 implies that the diligent will get rich. Many Mennonites like this verse and think that poor people are lazy. But what about Proverbs 13:23 that says that The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice. So we need to be careful to take each Proverb in the light of other Scripture.
• Hebrew Poetry: I think it’s also important to have just a basic understanding of Hebrew poetry. What are the defining characteristics of English poetry? (cadence, rhyming words, etc.).
  • Hebrew poetry primarily used rhyming ideas. Almost all of this section of Proverbs utilizes this rhyming device. For example, Proverbs 10:1.  To get the point of the verse, you really need to put both lines together, not that a foolish son will only be a sorrow to his mother.
  • Additionally, when you try to put something in poetry form, I think you tend to trade off a little exactness in exchange for something you can remember. (Just pick up the hymnal and look at the funny language/word order they use.) Obviously, the better you are at rhyming, the more you can mitigate this. But you still have to make all your sentences the same length. In my opinion, a Proverb like this can’t compare in doctrinal weight to a line in Deuteronomy, or to one of Paul’s 3 paragraph run-on sentence.
  • This is not to say that Proverbs aren’t true, but just that you must be aware of the genre as you seek to understand what God was trying to convey in this passage.
• Summary: the Proverbs are valuable, pithy lines to help us be thoughtful about how the world works but must be evaluated carefully to see how they apply to us NT believers.
• Note: these are some of my off the cuff thoughts and I would definitely welcome your input to “sharpen my iron”!

Chapter 10:

I hope to do more thinking and studying throughout the week.  However, I am thinking mostly that we can just sort of go through the passage and allow natural discussion about the each proverb.  There is just such a diversity of ideas with such creative wording here that it feels like you really need some time to digest these lines to really get to their heart….