JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical Theology. We’re continuing our series on books connected to Solomon. Today, Jason and Tom consider the book of Proverbs. We consider a general outline of the book, talk about the audience the words and Proverbs were addressed to, and we talk about the nature of Proverbs. There’s a lot here and more to come next week, as Tom and Jason will continue their look at this great book. But this first podcast on Proverbs is important. After listening, be sure to download the resources on Proverbs we’ve included in our show notes.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk. I’m Tom, I’m with Jason, and we’ve been going through books that Solomon is connected to. So Jason, which book are we going to tackle today?

JD: Today, we are going to address Proverbs, which is the second book of wisdom and our first directly associated book with Solomon in the arrangement of Jesus’s Bible. So in Jesus’ Bible, the Former Writings, that is the first half of the Writings section of the Old Testament, begins with Ruth, then it moves to Psalms, then we get Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and then the last book of the Former Writings is Lamentations. So you and I jumped in, and after our general introduction to wisdom, we looked at Ecclesiastes, and then we moved on to Song of Songs, and now we’re somewhat—in Jesus’s Bible—we’re going to be going backwards to the book of Proverbs, which when people normally think of biblical wisdom, that’s where they go. And Job, too, is a wisdom book, but it’s not associated with Solomon proper. So Proverbs is our first book associated with Solomon, the son of David. And that’s actually how this book of Proverbs opens. It says, “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.” So Proverbs it is, Tom.

TK: All right. And we have, Jason, so people talk about five books especially connected to wisdom in the Old Testament. And we would affirm that all of the Old Testament, all of the New Testament, all of God’s words, provide wisdom for us. So how did this happen, that five particularly get connected with wisdom?

JD: Well, a big part of that is the association with Solomon proper, who is bestowed with wisdom from God early in his life. He’s given the opportunity. Ask for whatever you will. And Solomon requests wisdom. And God blesses him in that way. And so we end up getting, I think it’s 1,005 Proverbs from Solomon, is what we’re told in the Book of Kings. And he guides people in wisdom. Proverbs are only one type of wisdom. And so it’s that association with Solomon, but not only that, Tom, it’s wisdom by its nature lays out two different paths. The path of wisdom and righteousness, the path of foolishness and wickedness. And it wrestles with God’s purposes in this world. Most wisdom is associated with what we would call a, well, what we would call retribution theology, or a harvester’s mentality. What you sow, you’ll reap. And we have the wisdom that is embracing that as a general pattern of life, and most of the Book of Proverbs does that. And then we have the alternative wisdom that’s wrestling when those patterns don’t actually align, and books like Job and Ecclesiastes would fall into that sphere. So where they’re wrestling with a world that doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t seem to follow the expected pattern. And so when biblical teaching falls into principles for life that are addressing skill development for what it means to be a human in God’s world, under God’s lordship. And it’s setting out general boundaries and principles and applications of more foundational laws. Laws set out the broad sphere, and then wisdom clarifies the patterns of life that should be guiding us as we live within that broad sphere. So, where we see books that are associated with—there’s only two ways to live: you can live wisely or you can live foolishly. And there’s no grey area. The context is one of wisdom.

TK: It helps to have this thought that the books do things in different ways. So, Job, being a book of wisdom, the author of Job doesn’t explicitly tell the reader the wisdom being taught in the book. Instead, he shows it. Where the author here—so using Solomon’s words here—he is going to tell you the wisdom. So, being able to approach the books in a different way and say, how does this book work? How does it get to the goal here? Jason, before we dive into the book, just a general thought about the Proverbs here. Would you say that these are general wisdom principles for people living in the world, or are they explicitly written for believers in Yahweh and for Christians? Is this Christian literature? So, is this intended for people of faith, or are these general principles that the book is saying, hey, live this way and it will go well with you?

JD: Well, if we were to step outside the Bible and look at wisdom literature from the ancient world, there are many Proverbs that were spoken of that sound so much like what we have in the Bible. And so, it’s been a general pattern of many interpreters to just view the Book of Proverbs as—this is just general patterns of how to live. It’s no different than Dr. Phil might give in his talk shows. And yet, I would say, that is not at all what Biblical Proverbs is about. It’s not general, just good guidelines for every human. Instead, this is covenantal wisdom. This is wisdom grounded in the fear of the Lord. If all you have is right living without a proper disposition toward God, then it’s all external, and it ultimately does not please him. But instead, this wisdom is a wisdom grounded in the fear of the Lord. Verse 7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” This reverent awe, trusting awe, of God that always gives rise to right living. Wisdom is about skill development. It’s about understanding how to live and make good choices in God’s world. Wisdom is choice literature, but it’s also covenantal choice literature, meaning that from the very base principles, the most basic principles in Proverbs, it’s understood that this is how to live within the context of a covenantal relationship with God. It’s about working out the basic principles established in the law on our everyday contexts. So it starts out sounding quite general. “The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel.” To what end? “To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing and righteousness, justice, equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to youth. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb, a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of this kind of life. So there’s the switch. It’s not just a general pursuit of wisdom and instruction, embracing the way to live and to walk wisely, to know what righteousness is and justice and equity. You know, it’s doing all of that within the context of the fear of God. So the principles set forth here are not just general for all humanity. They’re specific principles for those seeking to honor God, and through Christ, this becomes Christian wisdom. Principles for believers today. And therefore, it’s not just general truths for all the world. Because most of the world does not live under the fear of God. And most of the world has rejected their covenant Lord, that established at creation, and they’ve turned from him. And therefore, all they are are fools. Even if some of their life practices might align, because they are absent to the fear of God, they are foolish at the core. And this book is not for them.

TK: That’s helpful. That’s helpful. Starting at the top, you just read it, “The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.” So in some ways, this is like the superscriptions in the Psalms. What would you make—your reading this, your preaching, teaching, would you—What thought would you want to pull out from that initial starting spot that you’d say, this will help you?

JD: Well, from the beginning, this book is broken into—it has several different headings, because not all of this book is actually from Solomon, though it may be derivative from him.

TK: And we’d probably, normally, we’d say it, we’d probably, as Christians talk to each other, Solomon wrote the Proverbs, but you’re saying it’s a little more nuanced than that.

JD: It is a little more nuanced than that, and I’ll address that shortly, the way that the different sections in the book that are associated with different groups or different persons, how they may be still associated with Solomon. I think his wisdom is indeed infused throughout this entire book, and even later prophets whose words are in this book, later sages who spoke, they’re building off the very guidance that Solomon himself set forth. But what’s intriguing here, at the beginning of the book, “The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel,” I think the author is setting us up to be thinking these, this is not only the wisdom of Solomon, this is the wisdom of David, that he received from his father. There’s a pattern that is being set forth in this book of sons heeding the voice of their fathers, their mothers. And here, the foundational father in this book is David, King of Israel, and we have to remember where Solomon comes from. Here’s what Solomon says in Chapter 4, “Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction. Be attentive, that you may gain insight, for I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father,” so that’s Solomon saying, when I was a boy with my own dad, David, “tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast my words, keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom; get insight. Don’t forget, do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Don’t forsake her …” And here’s an example of where wisdom in this book is portrayed as a woman. “Do not forsake her. She will keep you, love her. She will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this, son, get wisdom. And whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly. She will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown.” So I go here, Tom, to highlight a couple of features. One, Solomon’s mother was Bathsheba. Solomon is the son after the original son conceived through David’s sinful act—after that original son died, after Uriah is dead—Solomon is conceived and born. And he’s growing up with a mom who is now married to the king, but who originally was the wife of one of David’s noble warriors. And Solomon knows his story. And David is now instructing Solomon as a boy, saying, son, believe me, hear your father’s word, pursue lady wisdom. And David is able to talk out of this firsthand. He understands the cost of foolishness. And so, right from the front end, there is a father passing on wisdom to his son. And now that son has risen as king, and King Solomon is now passing on his wisdom to his sons. So—and he’s elevating wisdom as if wisdom were a woman.

TK: Yeah, why would he, why would he do that?

JD: He wants to make wisdom appear desirous. Now, at the very foundational level, the Hebrew word for wisdom, hokmah, that ah ending, signals that this noun is feminine. And having grammatical gender tells us nothing by its nature about the word itself. So when we were in Ecclesiastes, we noted that Qoheleth, the title given to the Preacher, was a feminine participle form, meaning, “the assembler.” And I simply noted that nouns associated with trades are commonly feminine, but it tells us nothing about the doer of that trade. Similarly, abstract nouns like law, Torah, understanding, binah, wisdom, hokmah. These are abstract nouns, meaning it’s not like a cup or a pencil or a saw that you can pick up and touch. These are abstract nouns that are still pointing to true realities. Nearly all abstract nouns in Hebrew are feminine. But within this book, it appears that Solomon is using the grammatical gender of wisdom, hokmah. He’s using it for his rhetorical purposes. He’s treating wisdom as a woman. And in this book—in the beginning of the book—he’s gonna contrast lady wisdom with Dame Folly. And the book is written to his sons. And so we often read in 1:8, 1:10, 1:15, 2:1, 3:1, 3:11, and numerous other times, all the way up to chapter—through chapter eight—we see son or sons mentioned. And it, we’re talking about a royal lineage that is to be shaped in a context of wisdom. And just as David taught Solomon, now Solomon is teaching his heirs, but one of those heirs is going to be the Messiah. And that’s another reason why I think the book opens, even mentioning David, to draw the reader’s attention to the Davidic covenant promises, that a son of David would become the son of God, that David’s throne would last forever. And Solomon himself is setting us up to think about that long range trajectory because he’s writing a book of wisdom to guide a future royal son, a future heir to the throne. And one of those ultimate heirs will be the ultimate embodiment of wisdom himself, Jesus Christ. So you have wisdom portrayed as a woman because as sons grow, they are to be attracted to the right kind of woman. And so he’s using wisdom to play into the desires of the young man. And he’s saying that there’s also an opposing power, a temptress who can lead you astray. And don’t go there. Don’t follow Dame Folly into her home, for it will result in your death. And even as Solomon gives this kind of instruction, it’s all related to his own story and the wisdom he received from his own father. His father’s saying, Solomon, don’t go this way. Don’t follow the desires of the flesh as I did. It will wreck your life. And ultimately, as we know in Solomon’s own story, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. But Solomon is giving proper wisdom to his sons, urging them, “Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts. She’s mixed her wine. She set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town. ‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,’ to him who lacks sense. She says, ‘Come, eat my bread, leave your simple ways, live, walk in the way of insight.’” And yet there is also the woman folly, who is loud. “She is seductive and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. ‘Whoever is simple, let him come in here.’ And to him who lacks sense, she says, ‘Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.’” But then the wise Solomon declares, “He does not know that the dead are in there,” in her home, “that her guests are in the depths of Sheol,” in the depths of the grave. So, that’s how the book opens. And it’s the wisdom of Solomon, it’s parental wisdom, designed to guide a young man’s heart, to desire and be pleased in what is good, all wrapped in the fear of God.

TK: And it’s, because it’s Solomon’s son, the idea here is it’s not just general sons in the world this is written to, it’s for the royal sons in the king’s family.

JD: That’s right. The initial audience is royal sons in the king’s family, and the book is designed to heighten hope in the ultimate royal son. I mean, the readers of this wisdom are watching Solomon’s life play out, or they’re living in the days of the divided empire, where they’ve seen the foolishness, where foolishness has taken the kingdom. And so they’re reading this wisdom and saying, our leaders have spurned this wisdom. Oh, may the ultimate son of God rise. May this royal figure, who will embody wisdom and overcome all the foolishness of the world, may he come. But then, once you’ve identified that, and you recognize that our hope is in this ultimate royal son, then all of a sudden, his way of life can become our way of life. His pattern of embracing what is good and turning from what is evil can become our pattern of embracing what is good and turning from what is evil. That, in the same way that from the beginning, all humans were created to be royal heirs, called to subdue and rule and have dominion over God’s world, the kingdom of Israel is merely the means for seeing God’s global kingdom reestablished. And for those of us who are in Jesus, his way of life should become our way of life. And the pattern of wisdom set forth in this book, in turn, becomes a pattern for every man and woman who is part of the ultimate heavenly kingdom.

TK: So, Jason, we have, there’s parts of this book that warrant longer conversations. One of those would be the end of the book, Proverbs 31, but even what comes—what immediately precedes that—and I want to save some of that, if you’re good with that, till next week, about the wife of noble character. I think people talk about that. People even joke about that, almost as if, as if an unrealistic expectation is put upon people and not seeing that chapter as a blessing, possibly. But to be able to talk about that in greater detail, but would it be fair to say—tell me what you think about this—that if this book is written in general to the royal son, a way to think about it is ending with a wife of noble character, the idea is the prize of a life lived in obedience to what is outlined here is a wife of noble character. Is the book moving in that direction?

JD: Yes, it is. It is moving in that direction, where you have the ultimate wise son is able to claim a bride who is a bride of wisdom. So you’ll recall that when we were talking with Miles Van Pelt regarding Song of Songs …

TK: I was just thinking about that.

JD: He noted that the two different male figures in the book, Solomon and the Shepherd, are portrayed very much as man foolishness and man wisdom. And that part of the purpose of Song of Songs was to speak to young ladies in God’s kingdom and say, be wise in the man you choose. Similarly, in the book of Proverbs, the first audience is sons of the kingdom. And part of its purpose is to call the young men of the kingdom to pursue lady wisdom and to turn away from Dame Folly. But ultimately, Tom, the pursuit of wisdom—if the royal son is the embodiment of wisdom in this book, and that royal son claims a bride who is herself the perfection of beauty and wisdom embodied, then we’re also getting a picture here of what is ultimate within redemptive history, where Christ, the ultimate son, royal son of God, claims a bride who has become like him, pure, clean, fully wise.

TK: And fruitful.

JD: And fruitful. And so from that perspective, the Proverbs 31 woman becomes a portrait of what the church will be within the grand scope of redemptive history in relation to the ultimate groom, Jesus himself.

TK: That’s helpful, and we can go down that road a little further and some other things. Next week, Jason, love to talk to you a little bit about how this book is set up. Those of us who’ve maybe preached it or used it in a class sometimes struggle because unlike a book where you can follow a storyline, Proverbs can appear random and it can also appear like it says something here, but I can think of a particular Proverb, let’s say. I can think of four instances in my life where it didn’t work. And so we can struggle with, how do I deal with this sort of literature? So can you help us kind of organize it and even think about Proverbs as a whole? Like, am I thinking about it incorrectly if I say, hey, that doesn’t work?

JD: Yes. So yeah, let’s talk about that. Within this book, there are seven different guides, as it were, to the way of wisdom. The book is divided into different units, but all the units are focused on choosing the right path over the wrong path. So we start in, after the introduction in the first seven verses, culminating in the thesis sentence, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and understand instruction.” We then get nine full chapters. The first nine chapters are really set up like parental wisdom, maybe even designed to guide the beginning of life’s journey, getting sons up through their late teens. These are sons who are desiring wisdom.

TK: So you’re getting the mother’s voice here as well, just speaking into the son.

JD: Yep, mother and father. These are sons who are still living in the home, who are not yet married, who have hormones, who are needing to make decisions day in and day out as they engage within society. Parental wisdom for the wise son who is to hear and keep his parents’ instruction in order to see his life move toward what is good and not what is harmful to him. Then we come to what we would really classically think of as Proverbs. And after I overview the whole structure of the book, we will go back and maybe camp here a little bit and just consider proverbial wisdom and how to read it, how to understand it. But in this section, there’s four different units. The outside units are both framed with a statement regarding the proverbs of Solomon. So there’s actually a title in Chapter 10, verse 1, “The proverbs of Solomon.” And then in Chapter 25, verse 1, we read, “These also are the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied.” So, this section from Chapters 10-29 is framed by proverbs of Solomon. But when we get to Proverbs 22, we actually get another heading, another title where it says in 22:17, “Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise.” Now, it’s possible those words are still Solomon’s words, or it could be that this is a brand new unit called the words of the wise. And then in 24:23, we get another similar heading, “These also are sayings of the wise.” So …

TK: And would that second heading make you think that the—which is more clear—would make you think the first one—would you lean towards it being a heading then?

JD:Of a different group? Well, the fact that the wise is plural. So this is not just the wise man, it’s the wise ones, certainly influenced and informed by the proverbs of Solomon. But it seems like, yes, this is a different group. We’ve switched to two middle units, the outside units framed by Solomon’s wisdom, and then the internal units are the words of the wise ones, the sayings of the wise ones. And then the book ends with what I could say, if the middle of the book may even be like, in your day-to-day practices, as a young man seeking to parent a household, seeking to engage in business practices, seeking to live wisely in marriage, in worship. All of those proverbs in chapters 10–29 are really addressing that middle stage of life, detailing the way of wisdom. Then we come to the very end of the book, and we get two more guides. So, we start out with wisdom from father, Solomon, and mother, Solomon’s wife, two sons. Then we have four distinct units of Proverb groupings. And then in chapter 30, we come to the words of Agur, the son of Jaca, the oracle. And then, chapter 31, the words of King Lemuel, an oracle that his mother taught him. So, the book ends with these two sages, so I even call it sage wisdom. These wise men, it appears, toward the ends of their lives, reflecting on life’s journey and what it meant to live wisely. And these oracles at the end of this book are actually very, very significant, I believe, for understanding all the rest of the book, because they focus on the person of the Messiah. As one who was with God in the beginning, orchestrating all things, and it sets us up for understanding him as the ultimate embodiment of wisdom. And then, as you already said, the book ends in 31:10–31, with this portrait of an excellent wife. A wife of noble character, a wife of strength. And we’ll want to reflect on how does this final acrostic poem—22 lines, each line beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet—how does this acrostic poem relate to everything that proceeds?

TK: Right.

JD: And relate to the ultimate message of the book? And how should men and women be thinking about this poem in relation to our own journey of faith? And is it indeed setting up a burden too great to bear?

TK: Just as—it’s not an aside, it’s just something I’ve noticed. This passage would be one of them. We can get a tendency in preaching passages that we know our people have struggled with to almost apologize for them or make a joke about them. And I think that’s just not a wise way to approach God’s word. If it appears to us that the passage itself is foolish or is putting a burden on God’s people to say, I wonder if I am not understanding it correctly, but anytime we make a joke about it, I think it undermines people’s confidence in God’s word. So, I think it will be great to kind of look at this together next week, but I think all of us have done that at times. We’ve minimized or undercut something where that wouldn’t ultimately be our goal, but it kind of demonstrates we don’t know what to do with it.

JD: Right. Right. I think that’s good, and we’ll highlight more of that next week.

TK: Maybe an example would be, like when we talk about men and women in Ephesians 5, for instance, and if we make jokes about wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wife, that passage, and kind of make jokes about it, we’re undercutting what Paul is trying to do there, what God’s Word is trying to do.

JD: I think you’re right, Tom. That’s really helpful. We want to guard ourselves from treating as silly principles set forth in God’s Word.

TK: Right.

JD: Even if they’re so countercultural that the world views them as silly. We don’t want to buy into that, and we also want to be sure that we’re elevating a proper, rather than a misconstrued understanding of Biblical manhood, Biblical womanhood, proper complementarity within marriage, within society, within the local church. And it can be distracting or misguiding if we treat as a joke what God prizes.

TK: Right. Right. So Jason, we were going to talk a little bit about proverbs in general, and I think you wanted to start kind of in Chapter 10.

JD: That’s right. That’s where the main proverbs really begin. And I think it might be good just to try to understand what a proverb is. We have them in our culture a little bit. I didn’t grow up hearing a lot of proverbs. When I go over to Ethiopia, that entire culture is grounded in proverbs that have been passed on from generation to generation. But certainly our listeners, they’re familiar with proverbs. We could say there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Waste not, want not. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. We say these proverbs and we understand them. They’re capturing in just a few words something that could take a lot more words to unpack. So the first principle I would just want to lay out is that proverbs by their nature—and we see them all throughout this part of this book—but we see them other places in Scripture as well. This is just the highest concentration. proverbs are by their nature memorable bites. They’re pithy, memorable, poetic. And through them, we, in a very brief statement, we’re able to capture, though in perhaps a less precise and more universally applicable way, something that is, in another context, said with a lot more words. So we can say, look before you leap, or we could say, in advance of committing yourself to a course of action, consider your circumstances.

TK: That’s a lot more fun.

JD: Right, look before you leap is a lot more fun. A stitch in time …

TK: No, I was meaning the other one. That’s really, people love a poster with that written on it.

JD: Yeah, right. We could say, a stitch in time saves nine. Or we could say, there are certain corrective measures for minor problems that when taken early on, in a course of action, forestall major problems from arising. A stitch in time saves nine is just quick and memorable. We can say a lot more with fewer words through a proverb. So, proverbs are memorable bytes. Second, I would say proverbs are generalizations that work in some situations.

TK: And this is where you’re bumping into what can be problematic for some of us. We’re saying it doesn’t work.

JD: That’s right, because this proverb doesn’t work. But even in our normal proverbs, we see this type of tension, where even contradictory perspectives can be presented in proverbial way. And the proverb, each of the proverbs is true. It’s correct in the right situation. So we could say birds of a feather flock together, but we could also say opposites attract.

TK: Very different.

JD: Very different. Those are saying exactly the opposite things, yet at the right time, those words are fitly placed. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Versus, two heads are better than one. He who hesitates is lost. But we can also say, look before you leap. So, all these are truths. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A man’s reach should not exceed his grasp. These are English Proverbs that actually, when placed side by side, are shown to be contradictory, yet in their own specific context, can be very true. So, within the Book of Proverbs, many people draw attention to Proverbs 26:4 and 5, because there’s not a more apparent, we could say, contradiction within Proverbs than what we see in these two side by side verses. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” So, don’t answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become a fool. But then, very next verse, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” So, speak up! Identify the foolish way lest he continue in his path and think that he’s doing right.

TK: And so, you wonder, well, which is true? What do I do?

JD: Which is true! And so, two proverbs side by side like this really cautions readers from mechanically treating all proverbs as absolute principles that work in every situation. That’s not what proverbs are. In alignment with the very nature of what a proverb is, proverbs are short, they are pithy, providing general truths that work for most settings, rather than absolute truths for all settings. And that basic principle is why we need wise people to know how to apply wisdom in the right context. But this informs our reading. Solomon says in Proverbs 25:11, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” But a proverb applied in a wrong context gets something far less beautiful. So we read in Proverbs 26:7, “Like a lame man’s legs which hang useless is a proverb in the mouth of fools.” Or two verses later, “Like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of fools.” So the key here, Tom, is to recognize many of the proverbs are merely generalizations that work in certain situations. Now, I’m not going to say all the proverbs fall into that category, but many of them do, and so we have to understand how to rightly use a proverb.

TK: Oh, I was just going to say that’s a good question for any of us, then, is, are there proverbs that you’d say, yep, this is always true?

JD: And I do think there are what we could call absolute proverbs, but they have to be understood as those proverbs that are related to the unchanging character of God, or his unswerving disposition toward a certain delight or sin. Like the proverbs that simply lay out that which is truly absolute, regardless of a change in setting. And we see these directly in relation to issues of divine justice, realities of blessing and curse. But some of these absolute realities may not become true until the future. So let me just give a handful of absolute proverbs. “Those of a crooked heart are an abomination to the Lord, but those of blameless ways are his delight.” Proverbs 11:20. There is no time where that proverb does not hold true.

TK: Right.

JD: Crooked hearts are always detested by God. And those who honor him, walking in blameless ways, he delights in. Proverbs 16:1. “The plans of the heart belong to God, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.”

TK: The plans of the heart belong to man.

JD: Oh, what did I say?

TK: Belong to God.

JD: Oh, “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” So we have a God who is orchestrating all things. And man can plan his way, but God determines his steps. Because the proverb is focused on the very nature and character of God himself, we would view it as absolute. No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord. Proverbs 21:30. That’s just a truth that is always right, never wrong. So, it’s not one of those proverbs that is situational, and we determine the difference because it’s addressing the very character and makeup of who God is, or his disposition soared toward a certain action, or delight. So, the proverbs that are dealing directly with God’s character, I think because God is unchanging, the proverbs are by nature always true. But that sets us up for some challenges because there are truth claims about how God acts in space and time, regarding justice, equality, how he treats sin, and how he blesses the righteous. There’s proverbs that are related to these, that have God’s ways in view, and God’s unchanging, and because it’s associated with God, the part that’s associated with him and not with man is unswerving, ever trustworthy, absolute. And yet, there’s features of proverbs that because they’re compressing so much truth in a few words, there’s elements of theology that also have to be taken into account. For example, does a proverb related to divine justice get altered if repentance happens? And the rest of scripture would tell us, yes, it does. Because Jesus would ultimately bear the wrath that we deserve. So all of a sudden, the wicked man is declared righteous, and Christ bears the proverbial justice that is set forth in the proverb. And we have to account theologically within the larger portion of what we know to be true in scripture, when we’re reading a proverbial truth. Or, for example, we can read a proverb regarding the lasting blessing or lasting curse against a man or woman who either honors God or doesn’t honor God. And yet we see in our patterns of life where what we expect to happen is not what’s happening. And so it forces us to consider that these promises appear to be absolute, but they’re not holding true in this life. And so we have to understand that the sages, the wise men, were living with the hope of eternity.

TK: Their boundaries were further than our boundaries might be.

JD: That’s right. And they recognize full well that on the other side of the grave would be a judgment thrown. And that God would ultimately make things right. So I think that we have to understand many proverbs as eschatological truths, truths that will only be realized in the future. So for example, take this statement in Proverbs 13:21, “Disaster pursues sinners, but the righteous are rewarded with good.” There’s many instances where we would say, wait, the righteous are actually being persecuted and sinners appear to be flourishing. But the ultimate reality is this, and this can be our hope, firm, established and absolute, that disaster pursues sinners and it ultimately will overtake them. And the righteous are those who are rewarded with good. From an ultimate end-times perspective, eternal perspective, these are truths that will be realized in the consummation. Proverbs 22:8 and 9, “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail. Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, For he shares his bread with the poor.” I would propose, we’re not supposed to view that as a truth that is only sometimes, in certain circumstances, authentic. No, it’s related to the very justice of God. And because of that, it’s absolute. But it’s also eschatological. So in this instance, I would say this is a promise that those who are right with God can hold firmly to. And yet, we have to recognize that in this life, during the overlap of the ages, where death and sin are still abounding, in this life before the second appearing of Jesus, we have to approach this kind of a proverb as a promise for the future age and not for this age. Proverbs 28:10. “Whoever misleads the upright into an evil way will fall into his own pit, but the blameless will have a good inheritance.” And I would say, from an ultimate eternal perspective, that is absolutely true. So while there’s proverbs—while Proverbs, and books like Job and Ecclesiastes, affirm the general truth of what you sow, you’ll reap, we know there’s many exceptions in this life. Even in Proverbs itself, Proverbs 11:16, “A gracious woman gets honor, a violent man gets riches.” Wait, that doesn’t seem right. The violent man getting riches. Proverbs 18:23, “The poor use entreaties, but the rich answer roughly.”

TK: And they can do that because they’re rich.

JD: And they can do that because they’re rich. And this is a general truth that is just operative. It’s not how it’s supposed to be. There’s times where what you sow, you don’t reap now. But I believe Proverbs is setting us up, especially, specifically, those proverbs that are related to the very character of God and the pattern that he has set in life for what is true and therefore absolute. We can treat these proverbs as promises, but not necessarily for this age, but for ultimate reality. We’re talking about ultimate punishment of the wicked and ultimate upholding of righteousness. So Proverbs 11:21, “Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished, but the offspring of the righteous will be delivered.” That’s a truth, I think. We’re not just—I mean, I don’t see rhetorically, meaning within the argument of the book, we’re reading this—how are we supposed to take comfort with that when we see how often it’s not true? Are we just supposed to say, well, this is one of those proverbs that is just situational and well, it works sometimes, it doesn’t work other times, and it happens to be that I got on the bad side of the stick. I was on the side that it didn’t work out. Too bad for me. No, this is an example of a proverb. “Be assured, it says, an evil person will not go unpunished.” And God, I think, is giving us future, eternal promises that will be realized, and that we’re supposed to see this not as a general truth, but as a lasting truth, because it’s related to the very character of God’s oversight of the world.

TK: Would you say in that same vein, something like 10:27, “The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short.” I can have a thought of, why did that person get to live such a long life when they hated and worked against God his entire life? And then an example of someone whose life was cut off very, very early, Abel would be an example for sure.

JD: Right.

TK: The question is, did the fear of the Lord, though, prolong Abel’s life?

JD: And we would say, yes, it did.

TK: Absolutely. By faith, he still speaks.

JD: That’s right. By faith, he still speaks. And Jesus could declare, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I’m not the God of the dead, but the living. And so that lasting eternal perspective, we can never forget that we’re living in a cursed age. And because of that, in this life, we don’t always see things work out how they ought to work out. But in Christ, we have hope. And Proverbs gives us that eternal perspective of what is true, the principles that can indeed guide our life. Principles like, “Fret not yourself because of evildoers, and be not envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future. The lamp of the wicked will be put out.” I’m not supposed to say, well, that works sometimes. No, that is indeed a declaration for my soul from the Book of Proverbs that I am supposed to embrace. Not all the proverbs function that way. But these proverbs that are associated with the very character of God and the pattern he has set forth for all reality, we’re supposed to see as absolute and certain, but also to understand them as eschatological and ultimate.

TK: Well, Jason, I think we’ve gone a good distance today. Love to talk about some of these elements we didn’t talk about this week more in detail about that section specifically where you talked about the proverbs of the Sages, you described it, starting in Proverbs 30, the wife of noble character at the end of Proverbs. Talk about some of those things and then how the whole book fits together with that in mind. And if we could do that next week, for me this book was a challenge to put together into a preaching series because it demands putting it into—I would just say—putting it into a different order probably than you normally use. And a lot of us have probably wrestled with this before. Like, you certainly could, but you’re probably not going from 11 to 12 to 13 to 14 just a chapter at a time. The book almost seems like it’s calling for a different approach than that. So Jason, do you have any final thoughts about how you would preach or teach from this book? Not counting those last couple of chapters that we’re going to touch next week.

JD: Yes. I have taught all the way through chapters 1–9, this parental guidance to the son. But for me, when I’ve gotten into the section on proverbs, the formal proverbs itself in 10–29, I’ve never had the opportunity to preach like you’re just saying. And so I’ve sat under sermons where people have, for example, collected the business proverbs or collected the communication proverbs, collected the parenting or child discipline proverbs, and put them all together and preached it that way. But honestly, Tom, the last sermon I heard on Proverbs, someone preached through the entire chapter of chapter 11. And I was amazed at how effective the process of actually preaching from beginning to end within an entire chapter actually was. It was so thoughtful and filled, yes, with all different types of aspects of wisdom, because these proverbs are collected, it feels in very random ways. There’s been a number of scholars who have proposed that there’s actually collections of proverbs, groupings of proverbs, where a key word in verse 1 is then repeated in verse 6, and it calls us to read all of verses 1 through 6 as a group, and all addressing the same theme. And there may be something to that, but my point here is just to say, while our disposition may be—I can’t imagine just preaching through all this, what appears to be random wisdom. For the first time in my life, I saw it done very, very well, and all within a context of hoping in Christ, the ultimate wise one. And so for the first time, I actually have a perspective of how just preaching through this book, like we would other books, could actually work. But we can reflect on that more even next week. But to date, up until that moment, when I was sitting in a different church and I heard it preached, I had never heard someone preach from chapters 10 through 21 in that way, but I found it actually quite effective.

TK: That makes me think, I wonder how many of us sitting, listening right now are thinking, I wish I was there for that day. That would be awesome.

JD: It could be that we could get permission to put that sermon up as an example of preaching through an entire chapter of Proverbs. Because it was one of my colleagues who did it, and it was exceptional. I could see that serving our people.

TK: All right, I love it. Let’s try to do that. We’re also going to put up in our show notes some different resources, some of them we used today, some we didn’t, on Proverbs as you work through this book. So, Jason, thanks for walking through this with us today.

JD: Absolutely.

TK: All right, thanks for listening.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Be sure to join us next week as we continue our conversation on Proverbs. For resources related to Proverbs, go to our show notes. We’ve included links to resources connected to Proverbs found on both handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com.