Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs

Ellen F. Davis

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780664255220
• eBook ISBN: 9781611644555
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

These books of the Bible, despite their differences, all treat the phenomenon of what it means to live wisely before God. In this readable commentary, Ellen Davis points out that the writers of these books considered wisdom--and the fruits of wisdom, a well-ordered life and a peaceful mind--to be within the grasp of anyone wholeheartedly desiring it.

Books in the Westminster Bible Companion series assist laity in their study of the Bible as a guide to Christian faith and practice. Each volume explains the biblical book in its original historical context and explores its significance for faithful living today. These books are ideal for individual study and for Bible study classes and groups.

Proverbs

Introduction to Proverbs

The book of Proverbs is not high on the reading list of many modern Christians. As a source of spiritual inspiration and guidance, it is almost lost to us, at least to those in mainline churches, Protestant or Catholic. We rarely hear it read in church, let alone at home. Probably few of us would be able to identify a verse from Proverbs, let alone recite one. Yet it may be helpful to begin study with the recognition that over the centuries, this book has been to both Jews and Christians one of the most valued parts of the Bible. When the ancient and medieval rabbis wanted to talk in concrete terms about the practice of righteousness, they very frequently turned to the book of Proverbs; it is therefore not surprising that the apostle Paul, with his solid rabbinic training, quotes from the text (Rom. 12:20). In the seventeenth century, English Puritans treasured the book as the most reliable guide to the holy life. Digests of biblical proverbs were produced, and much used, to facilitate memorization. Even as late as the nineteenth century, the sophisticated essayist and art critic John Ruskin would say that the four chapters of Proverbs his mother had him memorize as a small child were “the one essential part of all my education” (cited by Smith, Modern Criticism, 300).

What the ancient rabbis, the Puritans, and Ruskin had in common is that they knew at least some of the biblical proverbs by heart. And this is the key to appreciating them fully. For the proverbs are little poems, each about the length of a haiku or a Zen koan. Like these Asian literary forms, the biblical proverbs are highly concentrated, and sometimes riddling, reflections on common elements of human experience. Read straight through, they are tedious and they run together in the mind, for there is no plot, no consistent development of a logical argument or a moral theme. But it is a quite different thing when one encounters them as they are meant to be heard (and not, in the first instance, read). Proverbs are meant to be pondered, one at a time. Medieval monks spoke of “chewing” the words of scripture, like grains of spice, until they yield their full savor. That is how the proverbs should be learned. Memorize a single saying; you can do it while taking a shower, waiting at the bus stop, or chopping the vegetables for dinner. Let it sit in what the ancient Egyptian sages (teachers, writers, and collectors of wise sayings) called “the casket of your belly” for a day or a week or more, returning to examine it from the different vantage points of varied experience. If you give the book of Proverbs that kind of time, then it will yield to you its wisdom. You will begin to sense the peculiar force with which the passages address the hearer who positions herself to listen well.

Proverbs are essentially oral literature; they circulate by word of mouth. Although some may be ascribed to a particular historical figure (the ascription of the biblical proverbs to Solomon will be discussed below), in a real sense their author is the community as a whole, which keeps them alive in its daily speech. It is, then, the authority of the community that speaks through them—and very significantly, not just of the present generation. These sayings have been passed on, first orally and later in writing, by countless “mothers” and “fathers” (see Prov. 1:8) in Israel offering their hard-won wisdom, the fruit of all their experience, to a new generation of faith. What makes it possible for the proverbs to come alive even today among people of biblical faith is that they shed light on things all of us worry about, for ourselves and for our children, the things people regularly consult their pastors about: how to avoid bitter domestic quarrels, what to tell your children about sex and about God, what to do when somebody asks to borrow money, how to choose the right friends and be a good friend, how to make a living that is decent, both ethically and financially. In short, the proverbs are instruction in the art of living well.

From ancient times, people have wondered if these popular sayings really have a place in the Bible. They do not seem to derive from revelation, a direct word of God. Rather, they reflect, quite literally, “common sense,” the sense the faith community has made of its cumulative experience. If this is wisdom, then it is wisdom of the homeliest sort. But that is exactly the point. The proverbs are spiritual guides for ordinary people, on an ordinary day, when water does not pour forth from rocks and angels do not come to lunch. And maybe just that is their value to us in the present generation. In a secular age, when many people, and especially the young, cannot accept the claims of revelation, pondering the proverbs may open a path—to use the sages’ own frequent image—into the life of biblical faith. Therefore they can serve as a starting point for Christian teaching, not only with the young but also with the disaffected.

Teaching people to “chew” these sayings and thus internalize them is an invitation into a distinctive way of looking at the world, an invitation into the community of faith. For, as we have learned from cultural anthropologists, the use of proverbs is one important way that a traditional people identifies itself as a community. You might say that the community is the group of people who share a particular set of perceptions about the ordinary experiences of life, perceptions that are condensed into their proverbial speech. Therefore native Hawaiians, recognizing that they are in danger of complete assimilation into mainstream American culture, are currently making an effort to revive the proverbs that are distinctive to their own culture, in order to preserve their identity and their unique worldview. An example: “When the hala is in bloom, the wana is fat.” This saying is meaningless to someone outside the culture. But to “insiders”—specifically, those who can identify the blooming hala plant and know where the sea animal wana can be found—it conveys crucial information about the right season to go diving for seafood!

A LITERATURE FOR CRISIS: THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF PROVERBS

Proverbs express the basic values and perceptions that characterize a community through many generations. They are a key to the community’s stable identity, and precisely this makes them valuable in times of transition and crisis. For example, West Indians hold proverb-telling sessions at wakes. The idea that proverbs can help in time of crisis may come as a surprise to us who do not belong to a traditional culture. We tend to think of proverbs as worn-out clichés. But ancient Israel, like modern traditional cultures, recognized proverbs as what they are: time-tested wisdom that can provide a point of orientation for those bewildered by change and the complexity of new experience. Because they take the long-range perspective, proverbs offer a way out of the maze of the present. The person who has mastered proverbs stands above the maze, where she can begin to discern the pattern and see a solution to the current impasse. An African saying runs: “The person who understands proverbs soon sets matters right.” Yet the calm, measured tone that characterizes proverbial speech should not deceive us into thinking that the sages are merely offering pat solutions to the intractable difficulties of life. The precise language and regular rhythms may be compared to the assured demeanor of a person who has not only weathered many crises, but also matured through them.

An example of how a proverb may provide an anchor in a time of social upheaval is found in the biblical account of the early kingship in Israel. When Samuel sets out to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as king, he first fixes on the tall and handsome Eliab, David’s older brother. The Lord corrects Samuel: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.” The rebuke is followed immediately by a typical proverb: “The LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). The proverb usage is significant. This was a key juncture in Israel’s history. The anointing of a king, and the shift away from leaders who received direct empowerment from God’s spirit, was met with mixed fear and hope, as the biblical account shows. In that situation of transition, the saying is a stabilizing force. It sounds the depths of the religious tradition and retrieves the truth that external matters—personal appearance and even political structures—are finally irrelevant to what God most desires, a faithful heart.

It is probably more than coincidence that the proverb occurs in the history of the monarchy, because there are good indications that the institution of kingship in Israel was in fact important for the consolidation of proverbial speech in Israel. Most obviously, this book is entitled “the Proverbs of Solomon” (1:1; see also 10:1). We are told that Solomon “composed three thousand proverbs” and that “people came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:32, 34). Does that mean that he wrote all the proverbs? This is unlikely for at least two reasons. First is the very nature of proverbs; they are essentially popular literature. Proverbs do not belong to an author so much as to a whole people. Sayings become proverbial when they have passed indiscriminately through many mouths. New “wisdom sayings” arise from time to time, sometimes created or fixed in everyday lore by famous public figures. A modern example is John Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” Such a saying survives not as a conscious quotation, but because it enters the language and is repeated over and over. We gradually forget who said it, just because it has come to represent the best intentions and aspirations of a whole people.

A second reason to doubt that Solomon wrote most of the biblical proverbs is that, more than any other major section of the Bible, this book represents the perspective of the “grass roots,” in contrast to the views of clearly identifiable opinion leaders such as prophets, priests, or king. It is unlikely that Solomon, who built up his administrative and defense systems by imposing heavy taxes on the peasant population (see 1 Kings 12:4), would call attention to his unpopular action by creating a saying such as this one:

By justice a king gives stability to the land,
but one who makes heavy exactions ruins it.

(29:4)

Far from presenting a royal perspective, many of the proverbs uphold the values of peasant culture—that is, of the agrarian, kinship based, locally governed society that Israel was before the rise of the monarchy. Many sayings emphasize good care of the tillable soil (see the comment at Prov. 24:30–34). Conversely, there are sayings that express the peasants’ experience of losing their land to the royal tax collectors:

The field of the poor may yield much food,
but it is swept away through injustice.

(13:23)

There are those whose teeth are swords,
whose teeth are knives,
to devour the poor from off the earth,
the needy from among mortals.

(30:14)

Proverbs such as these are a form of protest literature. It is likely that the rise of kingship in Israel gave impetus to the collection of proverbs in part to preserve a way of life that was endangered. It is important to remember that early Israel originated as a peasant culture that defined itself over against the kingdoms of Egypt and Canaan. Now that Israel had itself become “like other nations” (1 Sam. 8:5) in this respect, it was urgent to affirm the essential values that kept the community intact and faithful to its God: social and legal justice; mutual loyalty between parents and children, husband and wives, friends; diligence in work; honorable poverty; and above all, fear of the Lord. As we shall see, all these themes appear over and over throughout the book.

Even if the ascription to Solomon is not to be taken literally, it may well have a historical base. It was common for ancient Near Eastern kings to sponsor the collection of wise sayings; this enhanced the prestige of their reigns. Indeed, within the book of Proverbs, the collection ascribed to King Hezekiah begins with the observation, “The glory of kings is to search things out” (25:2). Solomon’s relatively peaceful reign and the wealth of his court promoted international commerce; probably the trade was intellectual as well as material. Sages of different countries exchanged sayings, and the biblical proverbs show pronounced Egyptian influence (see the comment at 22:17–24:22). Despite the grassroots orientation of the book as a whole, it is evident that court sages have had some hand in shaping the book. Some sayings are openly ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• General Introduction: These Three Books
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• The Song of Songs
• Works Cited