Woman Wisdom
THE FIGURE OF WISDOM personified as a woman who reaches out to the human world is another intriguing feature. The meaning of this exalted female figure in a strongly male-centered society has been much debated, for female imagery begins (chs. 1–9) and ends (ch. 31) the book, providing both the theological introduction and human postscript to the collections of individual sayings. Some find in this figure—and in her direct opposites, Woman Folly (NRSV, “foolish woman,” 9.13–18), Woman Stranger (NRSV, “loose woman,” 2.16–19), and the adulteress—the remnant of a goddess once worshiped by Israelites. Others see her as an extension of God’s attributes that have subsequently taken on independent life, or as a prophet. To others she is modeled after the real roles of teacher, counselor, and household planner played by Israelite women in their homes and societies. In the paternal rhetoric of Proverbs, Woman Wisdom provides an appealing antidote for young men to the allures of more dangerous women. More than this, though, she embodies for the sages the universal wisdom of which they see their own work as part, as she speaks with divine authority (1.20–33) and plays a role in creation (ch. 8). Resisting categorization as a simple literary device of personification, Woman Wisdom gains additional stature in the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, and even enters the New Testament canon in the masculinized form of the divine Logos (cf. Prov 8.22–36; Jn 1.1–18).
Formal Characteristics
DIVERSE LITERARY FORMS make up the book, though all conform to the canons of parallelism in Hebrew poetry. In parallelism, a poetic verse consists of two (sometimes three) lines, the second of which in some way restates the thought of the first. In synonymous parallelism the second line agrees with the first; in antithetic parallelism the relationship is one of contrast between the two lines; and in formal, or synthetic, parallelism the second line advances the thought of the first in some way. Because the sages are concerned with the inculcation of moral values, they often use antithetic parallelism to heighten the contrast between approved and disapproved behavior.
Proverbs 1–9 consists primarily of lengthy “wisdom poems,” which celebrate the virtues of Woman Wisdom, and ten “instructions.” The instruction, a form borrowed from the Egyptian wisdom tradition, is an extended poem characterized by positive and negative admonitions to youth, issued in direct address from parent to child or teacher to pupil (1.8–19; 2.1–22; 3.1–12, 21–35; 4.1–9, 10–19, 20–27, 5.1–23; 6.20–35; 7.1–27; 22.17–24.22; 31.1–9). Prov 31.1–9 is extraordinary because it purports to be an instruction by a queen mother. The acrostic poem of the Woman of Worth, or the capable wife, in 31.10–31, in which each line begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is another type of extended composition.
In chs. 10–30, readers encounter the highly crafted, two-line artistic proverbs of the sages, which are simple observations, but most moral mini-lessons. Specialized forms of proverbs are the “better than” sayings (e.g., 3.14; 15.16–17), their “not right” variation (e.g., 17.26a; 18.5a), and riddles (identified in 1.6, but not represented in the collection; but see 23.29–35). Admonitions and prohibitions add a motivation to the proverbial observations (4.21–22; 5.7–10). “Numerical sayings,” a favorite among Israel’s neighbors, use the pattern of x number in the first line followed by x + 1 in the next (“Three things are stately in their stride; four are stately in their gait,” 30.29). The arrangement of these forms is not haphazard: the sages used wordplays, key words, alliteration, content, and other devices in their ordering and editing of diverse sayings. Cross-references to repeated vocabulary are given in the notes the first time the term appears. [CLAUDIA V. CAMP and CAROLE R. FONTAINE]
PROVERBS 1
1The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
Prologue
2For learning about wisdom and instruction,
for understanding words of insight,
3for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice, and equity;
4to teach shrewdness to the simple,
knowledge and prudence to the young—
5let the wise also hear and gain in learning,
and the discerning acquire skill,
6to understand a proverb and a figure,
the words of the wise and their riddles.
7The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Warnings against Evil Companions
8Hear, my child, your father’s instruction,
and do not reject your mother’s teaching;
9for they are a fair garland for your head,
and pendants for your neck.
10My child, if sinners entice you,
do not consent.
11If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
let us wantonly ambush the innocent;
12like Sheol let us swallow them alive
and whole, like those who go down to the Pit.
13We shall find all kinds of costly things;
we shall fill our houses with booty.
14Throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse”—
15my child, do not walk in their way,
keep your foot from their paths;
16for their feet run to evil,
and they hurry to shed blood.
17For in vain is the net baited
while the bird is looking on;
18yet they lie in wait—to kill themselves!
and set an ambush—for their own lives!
19Such is the enda of all who are greedy for gain;
it takes away the life of its possessors.
The Call of Wisdom
20Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice.
21At the busiest corner she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
22“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
23Give heed to my reproof;
I will pour out my thoughts to you;
I will make my words known to you.
24Because I have called and you refused,
have stretched out my hand and no one heeded,
25and because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
26I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when panic strikes you,
27when panic strikes you like a storm,
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when distress and anguish come upon you.
28Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.
29Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the LORD,
30would have none of my counsel,
and despised all my reproof,
31therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way
and be sated with their own devices.
32For waywardness kills the simple,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
33but those who listen to me will be secure
and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”
next chapter
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a Gk: Heb are the ways
1.1 The book’s title. “Proverbs,” Hebrew meshalim, are sayings expressing commonly held wisdom. Solomon’s legendary wisdom is invoked, though the book’s themes and perspectives are not at all monarchical. In the royal ideology, the king’s wisdom gave him the capacity to administer legal justice and bring righteous order to society (see also 8.14–16; 16.10, 13; 20.26, 28; 25.1–7; 28.2–3, 15–16; 29.2, 12, 14, 16, 26; 30.27–31; 31.1–9; 1 Kings 3.4–28; 4.29–34; 10.1–13), functions here assumed by the wisdom teachers.
1.2–7
The prologue introduces the book as a whole, describing the goals of its sayings. It addresses the wise man who will be studying wisdom from the book; he will teach it orally to his students, but also gain from it himself.
1.2–5 The concatenation of terms related to wisdom (learning, instruction, understanding, insight, righteousness, justice, equity, shrewdness, knowledge, prudence) shows the broad scope of the wisdom to be instilled in the young (see Introduction; cf. 2.2–11; 3.13, 21; 4.1, 5, 7; 5.1–2; 8.1, 5, 12, 14).
1.3 Instruction, more precisely “discipline” must be taken; it cannot be forced. The association of wise dealing with righteousness, justice, and equity is typical of wisdom thought: worldly wisdom makes one right with God (see also 2.9; 3.33–35; 8.8, 18–20). Equity, from the Hebrew root meaning “straight, (up)right,” a concept common in Proverbs in both the concrete and the abstract sense, is often found with path or way (see, e.g., 2.7, 13, 15, 21; 3.6, 32; 4.11, 25–26; 5.6; 8.8–9; 9.15; 11.3, 5, 6; 28.10; 29.27; 30.20).
1.4 Shrewdness, prudence, morally neutral terms indicating cunning and private plans, yet here appropriated by the author as virtues, since all intellectual powers had moral potential. Proverbs knows several degrees of fool. Here the simple and young can be trained; elsewhere recalcitrant students without sense become the doomed scoffers, scorners, and fools who hate knowledge (see, e.g., 1.7, 22, 32; 3.34; 6.32; 7.7; 9.4, 6, 7, 12, 16; 10.1, 8; 14.9; 21.24; 27.22; 29.1, 8). The message is: wisdom leads to life, folly to death.
1.5 The wise as well as the simple can learn from the book (see also 9.7–12). Hear, pay attention, in this case to the written book, not an oral teacher. Learning connotes verbal eloquence. One can learn from the book to speak persuasively. Skill, the sophisticated abilities to direct events that come with experience, again not inherently moral.
1.6 Proper and truthful speech is a central concern of the wisdom tradition, both as a practical skill and as a manifestation of an orderly society; listening and speaking well determine worldly success and can be a matter of life and death (see, e.g., 1.23; 2.1, 6, 12, 16; 4.4–5, 10, 20, 24; 5.2–3, 7, 13; 6.2, 17, 19; 7.2, 21, 24; 8.6–8, 13; 10.8, 11, 13–14, 18–21, 31–32; 25.11–15; 26.4–5, 7, 9, 22–25, 28; 29.20). Advanced study in wisdom includes the proverb (Hebrew mashal; see note on 1.1), the figure (an artistic epigram), and riddles (none obvious in the book—cf. Samson’s riddle in Judg 14.14, 18—itself an enigma!).
1.7 Fear of the LORD is the beginning (i.e., prerequisite) of knowledge or wisdom (cf. 4.7; see also 1.29; 2.5; 3.7; 8.13; 9.10; 10.27; 14.26–27; 15.33; 16.6; 19.23; 28.14; 29.25; 31.30; Job 28.28). Obedience to the precepts of righteousness may begin from childlike fear of punishment but matures into adult moral conscience.
1.8–9.18 Using antithesis, these instructional and wisdom poems identify and interrelate fundamental values: wisdom vs. folly, good vs. evil, life vs. death, parental instruction vs. the lure of outsiders’ speech. These concepts are often presented metaphorically by means of two contrasting female figures, personified Wisdom and the strange woman (see 2.16; text note a), and of two “ways” (e.g., 2.13).
1.8–19 The first of ten instructional poems cast as paternal lectures, this one against men whose greed breeds violence. Each lecture has three parts: the exordium or introduction (including address, exhortation, and motivation), the lesson itself, and a conclusion.
1.8 Hear, my child, a typical formula to introduce an instruction; sometimes it appears without hear, sometimes in the plural, children (see also 1.10, 15; 2.1; 3.1, 21; 4.1, 10, 20; 5.1, 7; 6.1, 3, 20; 7.1, 24; 8.32; 27.11). Students of the time were usually male; “Hear, my son(s)” in the RSV translation is more accurate. Both mother and father are regularly named as teachers, though the mother’s voice is only heard in 31.1 (see also 4.3; 6.20; 10.1; 15.20; 23.22; 28.7, 24; 29.3, 15, 17; 30.17). The family setting may here be a literary fiction disguising a school, but parental teaching was also an important social reality. Instruction, teaching (Hebrew torah), along with discipline, reproof, counsel, words typical of wisdom discourse (see, e.g., 1.25, 30; 3.1, 11–13; 4.1; 5.12; 6.20, 23; 7.2; 9.7–9; 10.17; 11.14; 29.1). Torah, elsewhere a term for covenant law, in Proverbs usually refers to more general parental instruction (cf. commandment, 2.1; 10.8; for possible exceptions, see 28.4, 7, 9; 29.18).
1.9 Fair garland, also Woman Wisdom’s prize (4.9); parental instruction is thus associated with Wisdom’s authority. The depiction of virtue visibly worn is common; it is unclear whether it is intended literally (see also 3.3, 22; 4.9; 6.21; 7.3; Job 31.35–36; Song 8.6). Pendants, better “necklace,” a multistranded adornment.
1.10–19 The motif of the violent men to be avoided appears also in 2.12–15; 3.31–32; 6.11–19; 28.17, 24; 29.10.
1.10 Sinners, habitual criminals, not occasional transgressors.
1.11–14 Though the instructor purports to quote the sinners’ speech, the rhetoric shows it to be his own construction (see also 7.14–20; 8.4–36; 9.4–6, 16–17).
1.11 Come with us resembles the invitations of both female Wisdom and the Strange Woman (7.18; 9.5). The latter will also lie in wait (7.12; 23.28).
1.12 Sheol, Pit, the place of the dead. In Canaanite myth, Death was depicted as having a gaping maw with which to swallow victims; the sinners thus equate themselves with personified Death (see also 5.5; 7.27; 9.18; 23.27; 27.20; 30.16).
1.13 Find. Seeking and finding is a common motif usually applied to the quest for wisdom (v. 28; 2.4–5; 3.13; 4.22; 8.9, 17, 35), though it is used once of the Strange Woman’s seduction of the simple youth (7.15; see also 25.2–3; 28.11–13, 28; 29.10). Costly things. Wealth and treasure are among the blessings of seeking Wisdom (8.18, 21; cf. 25.11–12); they are not without value, but only sinners quest for the things in themselves (2.1, 4; 3.14–15; 8.10–11, 19). Houses. The choice of which house to enter becomes important in developing the portraits of Woman Wisdom and Woman Stranger/Folly (2.18; 3.33; 5.8, 10; 7.6, 8, 11, 19, 27; 9.1, 14; 14.1; cf. 31.15). Booty, or gain, is also what the good wife brings her husband (31.11).
1.14 One purse, a temptingly egalitarian offer to a young man in a society where the family patriarch controlled the wealth until his death.
1.15–16 Way, paths, imagery for life decisions, often concretized with images of feet that run or walk in one moral direction or another (see, e.g., 2.7–20; 3.6, 17, 23; 4.11–19, 26–27; 5.5–8, 21; 6.23; 7.25; 8.13, 20, 32; 9.6; 10.9; 11.5; 28.6; 28.18). A variation of v. 16 appears in Isa 59.7a.
1.17 An originally independent proverb included here for persuasion: greed is its own snare (see also 3.26; 5.22; 6.2, 5; 7.22–23; 12.13; 29.6, 25), though the sinners are too foolish to see it.
1.18 Lie in wait, ambush. The sinners’ own words are repeated, but with the meaning inverted to reveal their folly.
1.19 End, lit. “ways.” See note on 1.15–16. Violent, untimely death meets evildoers, rather than the peaceful death of old age anticipated by the good.
1.20–33 Female personified Wisdom, here Hebrew chokmot, a plural form construed as a singular, as also in 9.1; the singular, chokmah, appears in 8.1. Perhaps the plural is one of majesty (cf. Hebrew Elohim, “gods/God”). She appears here as a prophet or street teacher (see also 3.13–18; 4.5–9; 5.15–19; 7.4–5; 8.1–36; 9.1–6), and the poem has verbal, structural, and thematic links to, e.g., Jer 7; Zech 7. Though she forms the antithesis to the Strange Woman (see 2.16–19; 5.3–14, 19–20; 6.24–35; 7.1–27), their portrayals contain many similarities. Shared vocabulary also links her to the capable wife (31.10–31).
1.20–21 Cries out, raises her voice. Her daring approach is personal and verbal, as is the Strange Woman’s (v. 24; 8.1; 9.3, 15). Street, squares, corner, city gates. Woman Wisdom is found where the economic and juridical life of society takes place, as are the Strange Woman and the capable wife (7.8, 12; 8.2–3; 9.3, 14; 31.23, 31).
1.22 How long evokes prophetic as well as psalmic speech (e.g., Jer 4.14, 21; 12.4; Pss 6.3; 74.10). Simple ones, scoffers, fools. See note on 1.4.
Like a prophet, Wisdom addresses both the teachable and the intractable. One relates to her in the personal terms of love or hate (see also v. 29; 4.6; 5.12; 6.16; 8.13, 17–21, 36; 9.8; 29.3).
1.23 Reproof, chastisement, an important educational concept (1.23, 25, 30; 3.11; 5.12; 6.23; 10.17 (rebuke); 12.1; 13.18; 15.5 (admonition), 10 (rebuke), 31 (admonition), 32 (admonition); 27.5; 29.1, 15), that may imply corporal or verbal punishment. Pour out. Wisdom is like a fountain or spring (see also 13.14; 16.22; 25.26). Thoughts, lit. “spirit,” but here an attribute of the mind combining emotion and intellect that Wisdom will convey along with her words to a hypothetical audience of sinners.
1.24–33 Called, refused, stretched out my hand, vocabulary that evokes the prophets (see Jer 7.13; Isa 6.9–10; 65.1–2). Woman Wisdom, though, speaks in her own behalf, rather than God’s. The gesture is intimidating, not welcoming.
1.26–27 Laugh, mock. Wisdom’s attitude matches the fool’s, and the capable wife’s (31.25); God also mocks his enemies (Ps 2.4). Panic. The effect of accepting or rejecting Wisdom is experienced internally as well as externally (see v. 33; 3.25–26; 4.16; 6.22).
1.28 Wisdom now turns to her real audience, the readers. Call. Her approach should be matched by the student’s (see v. 20; 2.3). Seek, find. See note on 1.13; elsewhere the terms describe the worshiper’s relationship to God (Hos 5.6; Am 8.12; 2 Chr 15.2). God, when angry, does not let himself be found (Mic 3.4; Isa 1.15; Jer 11.11).
1.30 Counsel, reproof. The language of the teacher (see note on 1.8) replaces that of the prophet.
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