Whole Life, Whole Bible: Journey through ScriptureSample

18: Words for the wise

The major turns in the biblical story — God’s promise to Abraham, the redemption of Israel from slavery, the making of a covenant with the people, the giving of the law, the establishment of the monarchy, the building of the temple — are conspicuous by their absence in the biblical Wisdom literature.

As it turns out, wisdom is rooted further back — in creation, grounded in the orderly regulation of the world by the creator God, even with the acknowledgment (as Job and Ecclesiastes provide in different ways) that there are great mysteries woven into the fabric of life in God’s world. Wisdom is not, therefore, a ‘secular’ alternative to other, more ‘sacred’ parts of the Bible. Nor is it surprising that Israel is able to engage with its surrounding cultures, gleaning insight where they reflect the truth that is God’s truth, because of the recognition that he is the source of wisdom.

This is made clear in the opening of the book of Proverbs, where it is said that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction’ (1:7). If Wisdom literature is concerned with living wisely in God’s world, then fear of the Lord is the first principle of such a life, where wisdom does not begin in human autonomy but in deep reverence for the Lord God; where wisdom is not merely intellectual capacity but is linked with discipline and discernment, shrewdness and skill; where wisdom produces a certain kind of character and demonstrates itself in particular sorts of actions. What’s more, wisdom operates in every sphere of life — at home, at the city gate, in the market square — and it embraces the daily rhythms of eating, drinking, working and sleeping.

These qualities are powerfully portrayed in the Bible’s fullest description of the regular activity of an ‘ordinary’ person — the woman who ‘fears the Lord’ (31:30), whose wisdom is demonstrated in her everyday activities of being a wife to her husband and a mother to her children, providing for her family, managing her household, engaging in international trade in cloths and textiles, negotiating the purchase of fields and looking out for the poor.

Insofar as the woman is a picture of wisdom itself, matching the portrayal of ‘Woman Wisdom’ in earlier chapters of Proverbs (for example, 1:21–33; 8:1–36), the image is applicable to men as much as to women, setting out the ideal of practical wisdom, embracing actions and speech, worked out concretely in the kitchen, in the field or at the desk — wherever God has called us.

For further reflection and action

1. Read and reflect on the whole of Proverbs 31:10–31, perhaps pausing to consider how the ‘fear of the Lord’ might inform your own activities today.
2. From what you know of the Wisdom books of Job and Ecclesiastes, how do they balance out the more confident assertions found in the book of Proverbs about the way life tends to work?
3. Song of Songs is often held to belong to the Bible’s Wisdom literature. What might this suggest about how the poems should be interpreted?