Proverbs (book of Bible)

Proverbs (book of Bible), book of the Old Testament filled with expressions of wisdom and experience. It is one of the books comprising the third part, the Writings, of the Hebrew canon. Commentators and scholars have long regarded it as a prime example of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Tradition has ascribed the entire work to the Hebrew king Solomon, whose wisdom reputedly “surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt” (1 Kings 4:30). This tradition is now recognized, however, as an example of an ancient custom of paying tribute to famous figures and of lending new works the prestige attached to great names. Proverbs is a collection of short moral sayings composed or compiled by a number of unknown persons. The most commonly accepted view is that these persons were professional sages who offered moral and religious instruction to young, upper-class Jewish men. Although some of the material contained in Proverbs may date from Solomonic, and perhaps even pre-Solomonic times, the whole collection most likely was given its present form sometime during the 5th or 4th century bc.

According to the textual headings, Proverbs consists of the following eight sections: 1:1-9:18, “proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel”; 10:1-22:16, “proverbs of Solomon”; 22:17-24:22, “the words of the wise”; 24:23-34, words that “are also sayings of the wise”; 25:1-29:27, “proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied”; chapter 30, “words of Agur son of Jakeh”; 31:1-9, “words of king Lemuel”; and 31:10-31, words in praise of a “good wife.”

The first section includes a brief introduction (1:1-6) stating the title and the purpose of the whole work. This section, regarded by many scholars as the latest material in the book, is believed by some to be the work of a 4th-century teacher, who may have also compiled the entire book for instructional use. Its two personifications of wisdom (1:20-33, 8:1-36) have been proposed as one source of the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, in the Gospel of John.

The second and fifth sections consist of proverbial sayings attributed to Solomon. With few exceptions, each saying is a separate poetic line, the two halves of which balance. The proverbs are concerned with various virtues and vices and their consequences. The second section is thought to include the oldest material in the book. The third section is patterned largely after the Egyptian Wisdom of Amenemope, dated variously from 1000 to 600 bc. The section contains some 30 maxims and counsels concerned chiefly with personal behavior. This, too, is written in balanced poetic lines. The fourth section, of indeterminate date, is similar to the third in both content and form.

The sixth and seventh sections were probably written by two persons who are unidentified but may have belonged to neighboring Canaanite peoples. The sixth section consists of a dialogue rather reminiscent of the longer skeptical dialogues in the book of Job and of a collection of numerical sayings. An example of this type of proverb is 30:29-31. The seventh section contains a mother's advice to her son, a king, on women and wine. The eighth section is a poetic portrait of the ideal wife. In Hebrew this last section is an acrostic poem of 22 lines, each line beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.