Tying up Proverbs – Looking Forward

So this is the last week in the Proverbs series.  In the words of Dan Patrick, what have we learned.

• Wisdom is  knowing how to live well and please God in your life.
• The Fear of the Lord is the starting place to gain Wisdom.
• Choose carefully who you listen to for advice.
• Wisdom is calling for you to listen to her and receive her gift of life.
• There are two paths: Wisdom and Folly.  Choose Wisdom.
• Wisdom is a Tree of Life –
• Wisdom connects us to God and to our Neighbors.
• The kingdom of Ants reminds us to work diligently.
• The Simpleton listens to bad advice and comes to a bad end.
• God created the world by Wisdom; Let’s live by Wisdom

Now then, Chapter 9 lays out two banquets – one by Wisdom, this time seen as a Hostess, inviting the unwise to come and feast on her Wisdom.  Folly is calling the unwise to enjoy the pleasures of things stolen and hidden in the darkness.  We note that the appeal is the same (v. 4 and v. 16) but the consequences are far apart – life or death.  So the the idea that all ideas, word views, wisdom, religions, cultural practices and the like are the same, Proverbs says “Poo poo”.  (See Madeline for literary reference.)

Some suggest that verses 7-12 are in insertion.  Well, yes, but by whom.  Much of proverbs is a collection of received wisdom, run through the screen of “the Fear of the Lord”.  We think the verses offer a sampling of Wisdom’s table, with a particular emphasis on teach-ability and reverence.  Folly only gets one verse for her sample (v. 17) because we don’t need to study folly, and because that verse makes it clear that she is appealing to our baser instincts.

So here ends our Proverbs discussion.  Our next topic will be a year entitled “We Believe” where we follow selected texts each month on the topics found in these two sentences:  We believe that God created and Spoke to Us about Jesus our Savior: The Spirit Unites us in Faith, in Hope and in Mission.  That is: Creation, Revelation, Humanity, Jesus, Jesus’ work, The Holy Spirit, the Church, Love of God, Love of Neighbor, The Future and the significance of Choice and of telling the Gospel.

We might throw in observations from Walter Kaiser’s new book, “The Promise-Plan of God” that seeks to unify the themes of OT and NT under the rubric “Promise”.  This is a reworking of his book from 30 years ago, “Towards an OT Theology”.

Proverbs 8 – some preaching

 Some excerpts from Sunday past:

Proverbs 8:22-26
    ” The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,
        the first of his acts of old.
    [23] Ages ago I was set up,
        at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
    [24] When there were no depths I was brought forth,
        when there were no springs abounding with water.
    [25] Before the mountains had been shaped,
        before the hills, I was brought forth,
    [26] before he had made the earth with its fields,
        or the first of the dust of the world.

               v. 22-26 says that God possessed Wisdom before there was a single speck of matter.  These descriptions, including dust in verse 26 remind us of Genesis 1 which tells us that the world did not exist apart from God. God brought it all into existence.  Even the dust from which Adam and Eve were formed came into existence by God.

            As old as the universe may be, wisdom is older.  Whether you hold to a young earth, or whether you think the earth is millions of years old, wisdom predated everything.

            This flips Naturalistic Materialism on its head.  For those who see everything inn the light of evolution say that knowledge and wisdom are also things that evolved with the universe.  And as CS Lewis noted, if they evolved from an imperfect world, they too would have to be imperfect.  In other words, Naturalism can not support the idea of truth – or it redefines it to mean “what we know today, imperfectly.”  So is it any wonder that we live in a world that affirms evolution as the full explanation of life but denies truth?

Proverbs 8:27-31
    When he established the heavens, I was there;
        when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
    [28] when he made firm the skies above,
        when he established the fountains of the deep,
    [29] when he assigned to the sea its limit,
        so that the waters might not transgress his command,
    when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
        [30] then I was beside him, like a master workman,
    and I was daily his delight,
        rejoicing before him always,
    [31] rejoicing in his inhabited world
        and delighting in the children of man.

      v. 27-31 says that Wisdom was present in the creation of the world.  Again one thinks of Genesis 1 when reading these verses.  When God was separating sky from sea and land from water, and day from night, Wisdom was there.

             The question is what was wisdom doing? 

            V.30is hard to translate.  The NIV and ESV support the most widely accepted version and the one that I think makes the most sense.  If you study this passage you will find that Wisdom might be considered a Craftsman, and observer or a happy infant delighting in its father’s work.

            What I believe is that Wisdom was the means by which God created.  In Proverbs 3 this is stated in non-poetic language.

            “By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundation,

            By understanding he set the heavens in place;

            By his knowledge the deeps were divided,

            And the clouds let drop the dew.”

             God created things in order – some obvious like day and night, and summer and winter.  Other obscure – like genetics that we are only starting to understand.  But there is reasonableness.  The times of sunrise and sunset, the movement of the tides, the phases of the moon can all be predicted.  God does not have gravity go up on Monday and down on Tuesday.  Gravity always goes down.  You do not weigh 100 pounds today and 200 tomorrow.  It is always better to eat fruits and vegetables than a bag of potato chips.           

The point Proverbs is making:  Since we live in a Wise World, created by a Wise God, we should choose wise paths.

             This is not, by the way, hard an un-fun.  For look at what Wisdom was doing in creation:  She was rejoicing and delighting in the ways of God.  The bible speaks of the whales of the sea playing and making sport – they seem to have fun in God’s world.  Certainly monkeys know how to have fun.  So God has made his world delightful, beautiful, surprising and enthralling.  You can immerse yourself in gardening, bird watching, cloud watching, star gazing, hunting, cooking, painting, hiking, discovering and all other things we have to do with the created world with great joy and wonder at the beauty and complexity of it all.

            So the Chapter concludes:  Choose Wisdom and you choose life.  For Wisdom is the very pattern used by the Creator when he founded the earth.

God created by Wisdom: Let’s live by Wisdom.

Proverbs 8 – mid view

So I am finding things other than v. 22 and v. 30 interesting.  Those are the particular verses of long discussion.  v. 22 is Wisdom a person of some kind or a metaphor?  v. 30 is wisdom a master workman, or a playful child, or is God the master workman and Wisdom is watching?  Well, despite what I have been reading I am not sure I can resolve them before Sunday.  Big surprise there.  Some say a Preacher has to have convictions or s/he will blow an uncertain trumpet.  I say, it is folly to be decided before the evidence is examined fully – and the usual pastor’s study in the week before a message is most likely not going to resolve issues that have been discussed for centures.  (I lean Metahpor/master workman).

However what about the idea in v. 14-16 that rulers rule by Wisdom.  That does not say, as M. Fox has noted, that only the kings of Israel rule by Wisdom.  But that all kings (can) rule by Wisdom.  That it is not exclusive to those who have the divine revelation of the scriptures.  Luther is rumored to have said “I’d rather be governed by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.”  (Some things attributed to Luther and to Yogi Berra were not acutally said by them.)   What implication for public policy is this?  Should believers seek to vote for c0-religionists, or perhaps more broadly for those who are ‘wise.”   Can we find common ground with people of other or no faith?

In v. 8-9 it says all of Wisdom’s words are right and none are cro0oked.  then it says. “they are straight to him who understands…”  Have you noticed that various biblical ideas (sexual fidelity, humility, living simply, servant leadership) are hard to receive for some people because they are so different from their own views.  There are those today who suggest a biblical sexual ethic is not only outdated, but unhealthy and dangerous.  (Read the literature on what should be in public school’s sex education courses.)   These verses suggest that it takes some previous commitment or knowledge of wisdom to accept that wisdom is in fact straight and not twisted.

In whatever the particular decision one makes on v. 22 and 30, it is clear that chapter 8 is saying that the world we inhabit is based on rationality – and a particular kind of rationality called Wisdom.  This runs against a purely accidental/materialistic view of life as some capital E evolutionists suggest.  Yet, it does suggest a potentially universal set of precepts that can guide all people.  The Bible upholds that idea. The Enlightenment to Modernist eras also hoped for universals.  Pre and Post moderns seem unconcerned with such things.

Yet, why do all hold that love and justice are good and that exploitation and greed are wrong.  The definitions differ and the admission may by hypocritical, but the concepts are almost universal.

Well, we are on Thursday afternoon, there is a wedding, a seniors group, and the stuff of life and a sermon to attend to. 

Stay tuned.

Proverbs 8 – a pre-view

So Proverbs 8 has been fascinating, confusing and controversial for centuries.  Is it, as Christians have said, a prediction of the coming Christ. (see 8:22ff).  Would then it mean that Wisdom/Christ was created?  Is this even a legitimate question?  What is the relationship of wisdom to the created order?  Will this sense of order prevail under the current view of the chaotic and haphazard origin of life?

So dear read, it is time for us to take a Fresh Read – do you remember the concept.  With the aid of tools (your English bible is a tool after all) we will read and discover for ourselves from the text. We will take a Fresh not a Rehashed view of the text.

What will we find?  Well you tell me!  Later I will tell you what i have found.

A Visit to the Ant Hill – Proverbs 6:6-8

A little preaching before FR takes a vacation:

A Visit to the Ant Hill – v. 6-8

⁶ Go to the ant, you sluggard;

consider its ways and be wise!

⁷ It has no commander,

no overseer or ruler,

⁸ yet it stores its provisions in summer

and gathers its food at harvest.

             There are thousands of species of ants in the world.  There are very small ants that can build a colony between sheets of office paper.  There are ants that heard insects called aphids, the way people heard cows for their milk.  There are ants that cut leaves, and grow fungus on them as a form of food.  Some ants live in small groups, others in huge colonies.

            The ants that are referred to in Proverbs 6:6 are called Harvester Ants.  They live along the Mediterranean Sea in the land of Israel, and they go out and gather grain.  They remove the grain from it’s husk and store it in their colonies storage area.  They can be seen working all though the harvest seasons, so that they have food to eat in the winter.

            Maybe because I was about to speak on this subject, we had an invasion of ants in our house.  It is not a bad invasion, but there are some little black ants that appear about this time of year every year.  They look around for anything sweet – spilled sugar, a cookie left out,  a drop of honey.  When they find it they somehow call on their brothers and sisters who come to have a feast.  I don’ tknow how they communicate – they do not have tiny little cell phones.  Scientists say that Ants communicate by giving off chemical smells.

            Well, we are not that happy with this lesson in proverbs in our house, and will be making sure we remove all the tasty things and wash all the counters.  It sometimes helps to wash the counters and window sills with vinegar.  They don’t like vinegar.

             Go to the Ant, O Sluggard.  There are two specific lessons that Ants teach.  

            The ant has no commander, overseer or ruler.  Now it is true that the Ant Colony has often a queen ant.  And there are different classes of ants with different jobs within the colony.  However, the point here is that the ants do not need someone watching over their shoulder.  They do not need a boss or a foreman to keep them busy.  They are busy by nature.

            This is compared to the Sluggard. What does the sluggard do? He sits in his easy chair and says, “Oh, I will just take a little longer nap. I will just stay in bed a little longer.”  It takes the alarm clock to wake up the sluggard.

               I once had a job as a security guard.  The job started at 11pm and continued to 7am.  I would go to work at night, then go to classes in the day, and then sleep in the afternoon.  Two times I did not hear my alarm clock.  My co-worker got mad at me for being late.  So I learned an important lesson.  I got two alarm clocks and I put both of them so far from my bed that I could not just turn them off and fall back asleep.

             Do you need a commander?  It ought to be that as a follower of the Lord, you do not need to have someone check up on you.  You should not need toe pastor or an elder or your Sunday school teacher come knock on your door and see what you are doing?

            We can all learn something important from the Ant in our spiritual life.  Do not lay about expecting other people to provide your needs.  You need to do the gathering and storing.

             Every day you should gather some of the Word of God from the Bible in your daily reading.  You should not just look at it, but you should take it home and store it away.

            Some Christians rely on others to keep them fed.  They only go to church, or they only listen to the radio or TV messages. 

            But you need to gather the word of God for yourself as well.

             I started something new this year during the season of Lent.  I read in my Spanish bible from one book and then I write out my thoughts in Spanish.  This is interesting for me, in that it helps me read the bible closely.  I have often noticed things in the Spanish that I did not notice in the English.

            This is one of the things that I do.  What do you do?

             He Prepares for the Future.   The ants know to gather food while it is available, so it will be there when it is needed.  So harvester ants gather in the summer and fall, and eat from their stores in the winter.

            The natural temptation is to eat the food when it is available.  So if you have a garden you can be eating the early tomatoes and the lettuce and spinach.  Summer squash is starting to come it.

            These will not be here this winter.  This is why the food is harvested and stored.  In years past, our ancestors would gather the food and dry it, or salt it, or smoke it.  They found a way to store it.         We depend on the grocery store and the refrigerator.  It would be easy to think that there will always available food.

            We will be wise to store for the future.  You should have money saved during the good times to help when times are leaner.  We have the old English proverb:  “Save for a rainy day.”

             The Scriptures tell us that we need to be aware of the seasons.  We will have times in our lives when we have easy access to teaching, fellowship and worship with God’s people.  That is wonderful when it happens.  But there will also be dry times.  So you need to be storing up spiritual strength when you can, so that we will not starve in the dry periods

            This takes many forms. 

            We need to learn how to pray – so that when we need to we can.

            We need to develop good Christian friends – so that one of us is in need, the other is there to help.

            We need to know that the scripture predicts times of hardship and persecution.  Are we headed toward a season of hardship for Christians?  I can not say, but I can say, that now we ought to be gathering the harvest.

Proverbs and the charge of sexism

Often we hear that the book of Proverbs is very male oriented.  We hear that it is, because of that and it’s age, quite sexist.  What are we to make of that?

the main teaching of the first 9 chapters is a discussion between a father and son on the lessons of wisdom.  So from at that point the charge has some merit.  Yet, there are several points that mitigate.

It is clear that in several ways, women play a key role in these chapters.  Both Mother and Father are involved in instruction: In 1:8  Mother and Father are in parallel, and also in the father’s recollection of his education in  4:3. 

Women are presented in these chapters as either the personification of Wisdom (1:20-33;3:13-18; 4:4-9; 8:-36; 9:1-6) or as the personification of seduction or folly (2:16-22; 5:3-14; 6:24-35; 7:6-27; 9:13-18).

Yet men can be represented by the various characters we find in the book – the wise, the prudent the diligent worker as opposed to the fool, the simpleton, the scoffer and the thick headed.

In the genre of Wisdom Writings, it is frequent that the format is the father teaching a son, but that does not make the wisdom irrelevant to women.  The dual character of both men and women to be either wise or foolish is depicted in a rather even handed manner.

Proverbs can not be considered a text-book for totaly egalitarianism, yet it does not by that earn the charge of sexism.

Proverbs 3 – Tree of Life

Here is an interesting question.  Can we link the “tree of life” in Proverbs 3:18 to the Tree of Life in Genesis 2:9 and 3:22?  Then can it be tied to the “tree of life” found in Revelation 22?

They share the vocabulary of the creation account: v. 13 “the one” is “adam”, v. 14 “gain” is the word used in Genesis for “it is good” (tob), heaven and earth in v. 19,20.  Verses 19 and 2o are linking Wisdom to Creation.

So then the Tree of Life is equated to Wisdom (the metaphorical woman Wisdom of Proverbs 1-9)

See Proverbs 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4; Genesis 2:9,14; 3:22-24; Revelation 2:7; 7:14; 22:1,2,14,19.

Proverbs 2:1-5 – Colossians 1:9-11

Proverbs 2 calls the reader to seek wisdom avidly, with the promised result that we would understand the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of God.  This struck a chord, in that the prayer in Colossians 1 seeks a movement from knowing God’s will (similar to wisdom) and results in “increasing in the knowledge of God.” 

Knowledge is a broad concept in English, but we can distinguish between knowing about someone (i.e. his will, his attributes, his history) and knowing someone personally.  Spanish uses saber for knowing things and conocer for knowing people.

Compare these two texts for yourself.

Proverbs 2:1-5 - ESV
    My son, if you receive my words
        and treasure up my commandments with you,
    [2] making your ear attentive to wisdom
        and inclining your heart to understanding;
    [3] yes, if you call out for insight
        and raise your voice for understanding,
    [4] if you seek it like silver
        and search for it as for hidden treasures,
    [5] then you will understand the fear of the Lord
        and find the knowledge of God.

Col. 1:9-11 – ESV
    And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, [10] so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. [11] May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy…

Proverbs 2 – One Sentence!

So my kids know that when I edit their essays, it will be to bust up sentences and to kill any passive verbs.  Now I come to find that Pv 2 is one sentence in Hebrew.  Of course this is a bit subjective, in that the punctuation is a later addition to the text.  But, lets go with the idea that the Masorites knew biblical Hebrew better than we do.

The form is 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 3.  this makes 22 verses, the same number as letters in the Hebrew Alphabet.  This is not an acrostic, but the sections in the first 11 verses start with a particle “if” which is formed with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph), and the second 11 verses has a conjunction at the start of each section starting with the letter lamed, from the middle of the alphabet.

V. 1-11 advocates with 8 verbs the searching out and valuing of Wisdom’s words (nice turn of the tables on Wisdom searching the streets in the close of chapter 1).  The result is fear of the lord and knowlege of God.  (reverence/awe and relationship/faith) as well as protection.

V. 12-22 delineates how wisdom protects from a deceitful man and a smooth tongued seductress, ending with a 3 verse conclusion.

To my eye, v. 1-5 parallel the process found in Colossians 1:5ff where knowledge of God’s will and obedience moves toward knowledge of God.  that is informational knowledge becomes relational knowledge.  (like the difference in Spanish between saber and conocer).

Another interesting NT echo is v. 21 and Jesus’ “the meek shall inherit the earth.” in the Beatitudes.

Pursue Wisdom intensely and She will guard you immensely.

Proverbs 1:7

We like M. Fox for his careful analysis of the text of Proverbs 1-9 and we also like the balance of the more conservative approach of B. Waltke.  It is interesting that both, and everyone else that we know of, agrees that Prov 1:1-7 is a purpose statement for the book of Proverbs, and that verse 7 in particular is the key to the interpretation.

Proverbs 1:7
    The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
        fools despise wisdom and instruction.   (ESV)

 This is a good case of parallelism. 

The first half verse is in contrast to the second.  Fools are contrasted with those who have “the fear of the Lord.”  So there is a moral/spiritual basis to Wisdom and Knowledge, not just an intellectual base. 

We see that wisdom and instruction is thereby mostly synonymous with knowledge.  The kind of knowledge that this verse is talking about is not merely informational – even the Bible would agree that mathematicians do not need to fear the Lord to know that 2+2=4.   In this verse the second half moves forward the definition of “knowledge” with the pair of words “wisdom and instruction.”

So then, since neither wisdom nor foolishness is about mere intelligence, this book is talking about an ability to lead a successful life based upon the premise that a life without the Lord’s approval and blessing is NOT all it can be.

D. Garrett makes an interesting comment, that the Wisdom literature of the nations is brought into Proverbs, but that it is screened and placed under the idea of “the fear of the Lord.”  M. Fox makes a similar comment, that this is unique to Israelite (biblical) wisdom in comparison to its ancient near eastern cousins.