By Rev Benjamin Fong (April 2020)
The Rev Benjamin Fong, a pastor in TRAC since 2015, is currently appointed to Barker Road Methodist Church.
The views expressed in this article are personal and might not necessarily reflect the official position of The Methodist Church in Singapore.
Summary
On the surface, the Book of Proverbs is a collection of observations on human life. These observations are meant to be generic principles compacted into a concise and often surprising package. As a form of poetry, these sayings cannot be read as literal promises that will always hold true in every circumstance. Rather, they serve to inspire deeper reflection, pointing us to the greater reality that life is lived before God, and that the centre of existence is not ourselves but God. This in turn serves as the foundation of the real promise, that following the way of true Wisdom, itself associated with God, is the only way for us to live rightly in the world, thereby experiencing the espoused goodness. These promises do not always come to pass in our immediate circumstances but will be fulfilled in time according to the bigger picture of God’s redemptive work.
Introduction
Preaching through Proverbs is often a preacher’s worst nightmare. What appears to be a collection of pithy sayings, with no clear thematic progression of thought, presents a formidable challenge to linking how these observations of everyday life contribute to the bigger message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet it is precisely because these Instagram-worthy sayings have this-worldly concerns, that they have the power to make concrete the life of abundance Christ came to give. This leads us to the inevitable question: can we take these sayings in Proverbs as promises from God? As is often frustratingly the case with theology, the answer is both a yes and a no, depending on what one means by the term “promise”.
At its most basic level, the question asks whether what Proverbs says will literally come to pass in our immediate circumstance. Will I experience abundant riches if I use what I have now for God’s purposes?1 Will we never go hungry if we obey God?2 Will those who are wicked submit to us? Will accumulating riches bring us more friends?3
The Problem with Proverbs
Anybody with a reasonable exposure to the reality of human life would quickly realise how these sayings do not always hold true. The wicked do not always fall into their own schemes; the righteous do not always escape evil with their lives intact; and children do not always follow Christ, even after being raised by godly parents.4
Further compounding the incongruence of Proverbs with all human experience is its internal inconsistency. Many have highlighted Proverbs 26:24-25 as an example not only of an inconsistency but one that immediately contradicts the preceding verse!
Do not answer fools according to their folly,
or you will be a fool yourself.
Answer fools according to their folly,
or they will be wise in their own eyes.5
This blatant contradiction should not trigger panic in the authenticity of Scripture (or in the wisdom Proverbs purports to offer). After all, secular wisdom has its fair share of contradictions. We invoke action with the saying that “he who hesitates is lost”, yet that is itself is contradicted by the caution to “look before you leap”, a saying more appreciated on hindsight by those who have lived by the former mantra.6
The book of Proverbs, like proverbs in general, are “intense observations of human experience”, and hold true only when we look at the human experience in a general sense.7
There is no guarantee that our immediate experience would match that of the overall
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1 Prov. 3:9-10 (NRSV).
2 Prov. 10:3.
3 Prov. 19:4.
4 Prov. 5:22; 10:16; 22:6.
5 Prov. 26:4-5.
6 Tremper Longman III, How to Read Proverbs (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 38.
7 Tremper Longman III and Raymond B Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 270–271.
human experience. As an expression of a general rule, one would expect certain exceptions to pop up in the course of our lives, their existence thereby proving the general rule (also another secular proverb!)8
We can therefore conclude that Proverbs cannot be read as promises that will hold true in every situation. If we are looking for promises on that level, we had best continue our fool’s errand elsewhere. But if the prospect of discovering how Proverbs can be understood as promises in a much more realistic, bounteous sense appeals to you, read on.
Tremper Longman III helpfully warns of the dual pitfalls of i) absolutizing; and ii) isolating these sayings.9 One simply cannot assume that each saying in Proverbs will always hold true in every situation, nor can we look at these sayings in isolation from the rest of Proverbs and Scripture. The same applies to all of Scripture, but it is especially so for Proverbs because it is in actuality poetry masquerading under the guise of a casual observation of the world. It is less a documentary on human life as it is a musical contemplating the human soul.
The Goal of Wisdom
Recognising the difference between poetry and prose is crucial to rightly interpreting Proverbs. Leland Ryken highlights a crucial distinction between poetry and prose – with poetry, the form is often key to rightly unpacking its content, serving to “set our thoughts and feelings to the right tune”.10 A literal reading is permissible, but we would find ourselves at best short-changed of the depth of meaning, and at worst turned into lessons in irony as we become fools applying the wrong meaning of what was intended.
A brief excursion into the wider genre of Biblical Wisdom Literature (which spans not only Proverbs but also Job, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs) is therefore necessary. Not unlike the other wisdom traditions of the Ancient Near East, Wisdom Literature is concerned with “the skill of living”: how we behave in various situations, how we respond to other people, and how we handle the challenges of life.11 Unlike the wisdom traditions of the ancient world however, Wisdom Literature adds the crucial theological lens that life is lived before God. Life is not a spontaneous series of unfortunate events, nor are we the sole masters of our fates. Rather, the Creator of all in existence remains intimately involved in the workings of this world, and as its designer, this Creator holds the blueprints for living rightly according to his design.
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8 Leland Ryken, Short Sentences Long Remembered: A Guided Study of Proverbs and Other Wisdom Literature (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), 15.
9 Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 276–277.
10 Leland Ryken, ed., The Soul in Paraphrase: A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poems (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 15.
11 Longman, How to Read Proverbs, 14–15.
Bernard Anderson, himself citing none other than Gerhard von Rad, identifies Proverbs 9:10 as the summary statement of Israel’s epistemology of ethics – “knowledge does not lead to faith, but faith is the prerequisite for understanding.”12Wisdom literature teaches us both that there is a God who has instituted a kind of order in the world, as well as how we can live rightly within that order.13
We can now return from our excursion and cast our newly enlightened eyes on Proverbs. As part of Wisdom literature, the sayings in Proverbs cannot be divorced from the theological conviction that God is sovereign, and that we are consequently obligated to live our lives according to a divinely ordained pattern. This pattern, characterised by what is beautiful, good, and true, is contrasted with the antithesis of God, characterised by corruption, evil, and falsehood. Proverbs transplants the reader to stand at the crossroads between these two dialectic choices, personified in the persons of Wisdom and Folly. Adding to the metaphor of the journey of life and the necessary choice between two diverging paths, the reader is urged to choose to walk the way of Wisdom over the way of Folly.14
The Promise Follows a Choice
Just as Wisdom serves as a literary device to represent the cause of God, Folly becomes another literary device representing the opposing team – the gods of Israel’s pagan neighbours. Proverbs thus serves as a polemic challenge against the claims of these pagan gods on the hearts of Israel. Proverbs 9:3, 14 describes Wisdom and Folly both as living at the high places of the city – locations customarily reserved, in the customs of the Ancient Near East, for a city’s patron god.15 The choice presented before the reader, then, is less about the condition of the mind as it is about the heart. It is first and foremost a clarion call for the reader to worship God alone.
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12 Bernhard W. Anderson, Contours of Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2011), 263; Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1972), 67–68.
13 Anderson, Contours of Old Testament Theology, 264.
14 Prov. 2:20.
15 Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 275.
16 Prov. 8:22-31; John 1:1-5.
This summons gains even more force when we consider how closely the incarnate Christ is linked with the person of Wisdom at Creation. In his gospel John uses wisdom language to describe the pre-existence and divinity of Christ, closely associating him with wisdom, but stopping short of a complete equation (since that would bring us down the rabbit hole of Arianism, the heresy that Christ is a created being).16 As those who have encountered the most tangible manifestation of the transcendent God, Christians are all the more called to make the choice of walking the path of Wisdom, over the path of Folly, choosing Christ over the gods of this world.
The sayings in Proverbs therefore are a promise from God, but not in the sense of an immediate fulfilment in every situation. As hinted at earlier, the primary promise of Proverbs lies in the guarantee that those who walk the path of Wisdom and choose Christ over the gods of this world will experience a life of beauty, goodness, and truth. That beauty, goodness, and truth will not always be experienced in every situation hardly negates this promise. If anything, it strengthens the promise, because it gives the assurance that the God who is still in control will fulfil these promises – if not in this life then in the one to come. Bruce Waltke, a man who has spent a large part of his life studying the Wisdom literature, thus asserts that while Proverbs has to do with observations of human life, its promises extend “beyond life”.17
Proverbs trains us to look beyond this life and re-order our lives not around ourselves and our circumstances, but around Christ who is himself the true centre of all existence.18 Those who walk this path will thereby find wisdom along the way, and finally come face to face with the one whom Wisdom personifies. Making this choice frees us from the self-destructive path of folly, because it sets us free from the biggest idol of them all – ourselves. Only when our hearts are healed from our “disordered loves” will we experience the promised life, as the apostle James would note centuries later in his epistle.19
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17 Longman, How to Read Proverbs, 90.
18 Ibid., 55 Colossians 1:15-20.
19 James 3:15-4:1; cf. St. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding, The Works of Saint Augustine (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008), 1.1.1.
We should not disparage Proverbs because the promise it offers shapes us, in the grand tradition of Wisdom literature, to respond rightly to new situations that occur even if they are not explicitly addressed within Scripture; this is done by “condensing” into broad generalizations “patterns that tend to repeat themselves”.20
We therefore should read Proverbs as promises – but first be clear about what those promises entail. May we all choose wisdom, and thereby find life.21
Further Reading
1. Longman, Tremper, III. How to Read Proverbs. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
2. Ryken, Leland. Short Sentences Long Remembered: A Guided Study of Proverbs and Other Wisdom Literature. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.
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20 Walter C. Kaiser, Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament: A Guide for the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 84.
21 Prov. 10:16.