Bible 101, Part 6: BIBLICAL WISDOM
Proverbs 3:19-35; Ecclesiastes 1:2-11
July 12, 2009 – Rev. Jerry Duggins
I don’t know if it’s still true today, but some time ago, the Bible was the all-time bestseller. In literature, it was alluded to more than any other work. And among the classics it had the reputation for being the dustiest book in most households. While literature students in our universities were learning about its importance in western culture, countless households were purchasing a copy of the Bible to gather dust on the bookshelf.
Certainly, intentions were better than this. Getting through Genesis was not much of a problem. The style of writing is not what most people are used to and the genealogies are a bit tedious, but short. Exodus begins on a high note, lots of action, but about half way through, things bog down a little. And then you hit Leviticus. That’s when the dust begins to gather for many people.
In the age of the sound byte, long books are falling out of favor. Since technology has made it so easy to transmit and receive information, we are losing interest in stories. We want facts, and today they are literally at our fingertips. I worry sometimes that we are becoming a world of nonreaders; not that we can no longer recognize words but that we stop looking for meaning in those words, that we are losing the art of words. A text has become something we receive and file away either on our cell phone or in the brain which has become little more than a human processor. We are forgetting how to “engage” a text, and this is bad news for the Bible.
It’s not entirely our fault. We’re flooded more and more with information that leaves us only enough time to get the surface meaning of a text and this makes us less patient with more subtle issues. We are in great danger of becoming a society of shallow souls. The Bible can help us resist this trend, but we have to go beyond word recognition with it. We have to penetrate it, get below the surface. We have to engage it.
It won’t do to use the sound byte approach to the Bible, pulling verses out of context to get it to say what we want to hear. We cannot ignore its subtlety or complexity. We cannot reduce it to twelve simple rules to live by. This “Bible 101” sermon series is not about simplifying the Bible, but about introducing it in such a way that you can go deeper with it. It’s a difficult book, but to those who will engage it, wrestle with it, there are words of life.
By now, you should be getting the idea that the Bible is a multi-faceted book. So far we’ve talked specifically about the narrative nature of the Bible, how to understand the legal material and been introduced to the prophets. Today, we meet the sages and I’ll introduce some things to keep in mind when reading the wisdom literature.
This morning I will be focusing on Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job, but some people include Song of Solomon along with a couple books from the Apocrypha, some “extra” books that didn’t make it into the Christian canon. We refer to them as deutero-canonical meaning of secondary importance.
Song of Solomon is sometimes
included because of its link to Solomon, the king from
This is not to say that Solomon
did not have a great influence on wisdom literature. It was under his reign
that
The most important thing to remember about wisdom is that it seeks to understand experience. The Hebrew word, hokmah, is broad in scope. Michael Machado suggests five senses in which the word is used in Proverbs. He writes about a “pragmatic” sense in which wisdom describes an unusual skill or ability. It’s a keen perception in the “right way to make or do things.” Secondly, he discusses the “experiential” sense, a general skill in living. Wisdom, he says, is the ability of “getting on in life.” Thirdly, wisdom has a moral sense. It’s the ability to discern and to do what is right. Fourthly, wisdom has a philosophical character. This is about finding “meaning” in things. And finally, wisdom is spiritual. It is able to discern God’s intentions for life. This last one comes only as a gift from God. He summarizes these senses when he describes wisdom as “practical knowledge that when applied makes for successful living.” (p.30).
The goal of wisdom is to assist people in living well. Wisdom literature tries to accomplish this using a variety of tools. The most common technique used in the book of Proverbs is the short saying. Leo Purdue sorts these into six categories: the proverb, the comparison saying, the “better” saying, the beatitude, the numerical saying and the abomination saying.
He divides the proverb into three types: literary, antithetical, and synthetic. The proverb is usually made up of two lines. In the literary type, the second line extends the thought of the first. So in 11:25, we read, “A generous person will be enriched, and one who gives water will get water.” The antithetical is most common and contrasts two things as in 11:13: “A gossip goes about telling secrets, but one who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a confidence.” The synthetic also develops or extends the opening line but lacks the parallelism of the literary proverb as in 15:3, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.”
The comparative saying is often among the more colorful sayings and does just what it sounds like, compares two things. In 10:26 we read, “Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so are the lazy to their employers.” and in 25:14, “Like clouds and wind without rain is one who boasts of a gift never given.”
The “better” saying needs no explanation. Consider this pair from 15:16-17, “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble with it. Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it.”
You may be familiar with the beatitudes of Jesus in the sermon on the mount. The form wasn’t original to him. In 3:13, we read “Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold.”
The numerical saying is not difficult to spot either. From 30:18-19 – “Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a woman.”
Finally the abomination saying draws attention to the curse as in verse 32 of our reading earlier, “for the perverse are an abomination to the Lord.” I should note that “perverse” is linked with acts of violence in this context and doesn’t necessarily carry any sexual connotation.
In addition to sayings, wisdom literature uses the instruction form, longer than the saying and often addressed to my child or my children. This reminds us that in addition to the royal courts of Solomon, wisdom found a rich source in the teachings handed down from parent to child. You’ll find a series of ten instructions in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. They don’t parallel the ten commandments, but the number probably isn’t accidental. The focus is on “right living” which can only be attained by becoming a student of wisdom.
Perdue also mentions the didactive narrative which you’ll find at the beginning and end of Job, as well as the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50 and in the story of Solomon’s succession In II Samuel and the beginning of Kings.
A fourth technique used by the sages was dialogue. This covers most of the book of Job about which I’ll have more to say.
Poetry is not uncommon in the wisdom literature. There are three poems concerning Lady Wisdom in proverbs in which wisdom is personified in the figure of a woman with almost god-like qualities. Even though Proverbs has some rather conventional ideas about the role of woman, it isn’t afraid to use feminine imagery to say something important about God.
In these poems we learn that wisdom undergirds all of creation, that she is the source of its order. In connecting wisdom with creation, the sages turn the search for wisdom into a search for God. They believed that the universe was orderly, that one could make sense of it. They believed that with careful observation of the world they could discern some things about God. Proverbs takes the orthodox line on this, speaking of the prosperity of the righteous and the just desserts of the wicked. In seeing an orderly universe they understood that evil people worked against the nature of reality. They violated its order; and because of this they would never learn wisdom. This is how proverbs comes to have both a secular feeling and a sacred sense to it. It aims at showing the path to a successful life in language suitable to any well-intentioned agnostic today. At the same time, the sages seem to hold this ulterior motive, that in introducing their students to the ways of wisdom, they are offering insight into the character of God. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is repeated just enough to remind us of the ultimate goal.
At first glance, Job and Ecclesiastes would appear to be challenging this notion. Take Job. We are told at the beginning of the story that he is a righteous man, that he has been enormously successful, presumably because of this righteousness. But then things start to go wrong, and his life becomes rather pitiful. He loses property in disasters of one sort or another. His children die. His health declines. And his friends prefer to point our his sin rather than stand by him in his distress. The order presumed by Proverbs is violated. Why do bad things happen to good people? His friends insist that he sinned, but Job maintains that he has not. And Job is right. And he wants his day in court. He wants God to make the world the way it was.
After the holocaust, many people
stopped believing that reality was undergirded by God. They stopped believing
in the worldview of the sages. Well bad things happened to
Even though Job maintains his righteousness throughout the story he says at the end to the Lord, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted… I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Of what did Job repent? Virginia Mollenkott tackles this question, disagreeing with the classical answer that Job’s ego had gotten too big, that he had become prideful. And perhaps he sounds like this. His friends certainly accuse him of excessive pride, but God doesn’t. God affirms Jobs righteousness at the end as well. Mollenkott doesn’t use this word, but I think it fits her description. Job repents of forgetfulness. She puts it this way:
“From the beginning, Job has been very clear about his oneness with other human beings. He had always been good to his servants because he understood that the same God who formed him had also formed them. …He had treated fatherless young people as if he himself were their father; he knows that if he had raised his arm against them, he would have broken his own arm. But although Job is aware that the breath in his nostrils is God’s breath, still he tends to see God as over against himself, as someone who has denied him justice, as somebody other, somebody opposite who has wronged him.” (p.21).
In other words he’d forgotten that His life was undergirded by the life of God; that even facing adversity, there was still the right thing to do. Whatever may be happening to us, it remains most important that we continue to live into the life God intends for us; because that’s the only life lived in God.
Ecclesiastes comes down to this same truth as well. The sage has become something of a skeptic. “Vanity of vanities,” he cries, “there is nothing new under the sun.” This is the exact opposite of Job. There are no surprises. Everything works just the way it’s supposed to. What a bore! But just as Job ends, so does Ecclesiastes. “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone.” (12:13)
There is so much that one might say about Ecclesiastes. It is not as pessimistic as some would say. It affirms the goodness of work, whether it produces wealth or not. It affirms a rhythm to life in which one can find a sense of peace. It affirms that the ways of wisdom are worthwhile whether they bring success or not.
But in the end, it is this
comment about fearing God that matters most, that as Proverbs says, is the
beginning of wisdom. Not fear in the sense of
cowering before God, but in the recognition that to lose the connection to God
is to lose one’s whole self. There are
temptations that can break this connection. Proverbs reminds us of the
temptation to foolishness, to live the life of ease instead of discipline. Job places
before us the temptation of suffering, perhaps the greatest stumbling block in
our time. And
Ecclesiastes challenges us to never let boredom get the best of us. We are made to
live not just any life, but the kind of life that ushers in an awareness of
God’s presence and love. “Seek first the
Amen.
Brown, William P. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary
for Teaching and Preaching: Ecclesiastes. John Knox Press:
Machado, Michael A. The Book of Proverbs: The Wisdom
of Words. Paulist Press:
Perdue, Leo G. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary
for Teaching and Preaching: Proverbs. John Knox Press: