Wisdom literature is more ancient than the Bible and comes from both Egypt and Mesopotamia. Fundamentally didactic, it seeks to teach people, particularly those in high places, how to promote the orderliness of the world or deal with problems when it fails. Wisdom in the Bible shares the themes and genres of this larger literature, but Israel joins wisdom to the study of the Torah and identifies the wise as those who keep the Torah.

14.1. Wisdom in the Bible

Wisdom literature presumes an understanding of the world in which the good are rewarded, and the bad are punished. According to wisdom, order leads to wisdom which brings about justice and goodness, while disorder causes foolishness and leads to injustice and sin. The central problem of wisdom emerges when this expectation fails: when the good are punished, and the bad are rewarded.

The Book of Proverbs opens with a statement of wisdom’s purpose (1:1-7):

¹ The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
² For learning about wisdom and instruction,
for understanding words of insight,
³ for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice, and equity;
⁴ to teach shrewdness to the simple,
knowledge and prudence to the young—
⁵ let the wise also hear and gain in learning,
and the discerning acquire skill,
⁶ to understand a proverb and a figure,
the words of the wise and their riddles.

⁷ The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.

The statement links wisdom to both learning and skill—theoretical and practical knowledge. Prudence allows the wise to find the middle way leading to “righteousness, justice, and equity,” which assure the good order of the world.

Prov 1:a7 announces: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.” This literature continually equates “the fear of the LORD” with wisdom: Ps 111:10; Job 28:28; Prov 1:7, 29; 2:5; 9:10; 15:33; Sirach 1:14,16,18,20,27; 19:20; 21:11; 25:10. The word “fear” can suggest “terror,” but the word “awe” better captures the emotion of overwhelming wonder and reverence which characterize this beginning. Primarily biblical wisdom celebrates God’s creative and active power, especially as revealed in the Torah, which defines justice and goodness for Israel.

Like the Torah, wisdom should pervade the whole of one’s life; it is practical and daily. Much wisdom comes from a shrewd observance of life. According to its favorite metaphor, life is like a journey, and each person must decide which way to follow. Psalm 1 provides a classic example of the two ways of wisdom and wickedness. Still, life demands different responses; as Qohelth says: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” The wise can discern whether it is a time to seek or to lose, to keep or to throw away (Eccl 3:1-8).

The problem for wisdom comes when the good suffer and the wicked prosper. The Book of Job is, of course, the most famous wrestling with this question. Job 3-31 moves back and forth between speeches of counsel by his friends and Job’s response to them as they deal with this dilemma.

14.2. The Characters of Wisdom Literature

The characters of wisdom literature are, first of all, the teacher and the student. Then come others in similar relationships, such as parents and children, and especially in this culture, the father and his son. Not surprisingly, parents are under the special protection of wisdom. Other characters reflect the contrast between wisdom and ignorance: the righteous and the wicked, the wise and the foolish, the skillful and the ignorant, the good and the bad, the just and the sinners. The poor also receive the special protection of wisdom, yet this theology often identifies the wise with the prosperous and successful and celebrates their achievement.

Solomon is the archetypal wisdom figure of the Bible, and the opening lines of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. and Song of Song honor him as their author. Finally, since “wisdom” is grammatically feminine in Hebrew, she is personified as a woman, as in Proverbs 9, and she speaks for herself in Prov 1:20-33; 8:1-36; and Wis 6:12-16. In the Book of Wisdom, this personification becomes an even larger ontological reality and force.

The Book of Ecclesiastes gives us one of the great wisdom voices, called “Qoheleth” in Hebrew, and translated as  “the Teacher‚” or “the Preacher.” He famously begins: “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, / vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). Traditionally identified as the old man Solomon, the speaker does not entirely fit this description. Surely a man of many parts, Qoheleth shows himself a round character with his sardonic yet admittedly wise observations about life. Most of wisdom’s characters are not round—Job and Ecclesiastes being the main exceptions. Much of the literature presents us with flat characters representing the idea of wisdom and foolishness. These flat characters fulfill stock plots, in which good triumphs. The complexity of wisdom comes with its incisive observation of life and its juxtaposition of truths. The wise know all of the proverbs, and, more importantly, they know which one fits the present moment.

14.3. The Genres of Wisdom Literature

In world literature, wisdom takes the form of narrative. Fables with their talking animals ending with a moral are prime examples. Though people are forever making biblical stories into moral fables, there are very few real instances of this genre. The stories of Daniel and Susanna (Daniel 13) and Tobit have a clear didactic function. However, wisdom in the Bible does not favor narrative but proverbs and instruction. The Book of Proverbs begins with a section of wisdom instruction (ch. 1-9), followed by several collections of proverbs (ch. 10-31), and ends with a celebration of the wise woman (ch. 31). The proverb is its basic building block.

a. the proverb

The proverb appears in almost all cultures, and in folklore scholarship, proverbs have their own branch of study: paremiology. Wolfgang Mieder, a renowned folklorist and paremiologist, gives this definition.

Proverbs [are] concise traditional statements of apparent truths with currency among the folk. More elaborately stated, proverbs are short, generally known sentences of the folk that contain wisdom, truths, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form and that are handed down from generation to generation. (Mieder, 1996, 597; 2008, 11).

An easy example is the English proverb, “Haste makes waste.” The key words rhyme and are mediated by “makes,” a near rhyme. The choice of words makes the proverb memorable.

No proverb captures the whole of wisdom, so this proverb warning about moving too quickly has a complement: “A stitch in time saves nine.” The wise know both proverbs and, more importantly, they know whether we need a stitch in time or whether that would only waste our time. Only those who know which proverb applies to the moment are actually wise.

Peter Grzybek points out “the close interrelationship of the proverbs context, proverb function, and proverb meaning” (35). The performer asserts a relationship of likeness between the proverb and the situation at hand—a metaphorical relationship. Here the proverb clarifies the present moment by functioning as warning, caution, explanation, justification, etc. (38). Second, the proverbs of a given community also capture essential elements of its norms and values. By learning the society’s proverbs, a person imbibes its basic social fabric (39). These proverbs also reinforce social control, set an educational agenda, and provide psychological release and entertainment (Fontaine, 4.2.1). Though wisdom literature is much older than the biblical books, the proverb becomes dominant in the late exilic period when Judah is forging a new identity around Torah, which it identifies with wisdom.

Proverbs make use of every available strategy: alliteration, rhyme, parallelism, ellipsis, metonymy, metaphor, irony, hyperbole, humor, etc. Biblical proverbs follow the parallel structure of the couplet. The “Proverbs of Solomon” begin in Proverbs 10:1 with the couplet:

A wise child makes a glad father,
but a foolish child is a mother’s grief.

The word pairs are clear, and the vocabulary of “wise and foolish” with the parent-teachers belongs to the language of wisdom. The couplet forms contrasting parallelism with the two lines affirming the same idea from different perspectives. Many proverbs use contrasting parallelism as here. There are also examples of similar parallelism, as in Prov 17:4.

The evildoer gives heed to wicked lips,
the liar, to a mischievous tongue.

Comparative proverbs also make up a large group.

Better is a little with the fear of the LORD
than great treasure and trouble with it. (Prov 15:16-17)
Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is
than a fatted ox and hatred with it.

Some proverbs contain metaphors, often with “like.”

Like snow in summer or rain in harvest,
so honor is not fitting for a fool. (Prov 26:1)

Other proverbs follow the pattern of “If/when this, then that.”

If you curse father or mother,
your lamp will go out in utter darkness. (Prov 20:20)

These examples represent basic types of biblical proverbs, but wisdom’s teachers were capable of great creativity (Grillo, 186;  Schipper, 29-32).

b. the wisdom monologue or instruction

Wisdom literature often uses monologues by a wisdom figure to instruct a child or student. The wisdom figure may be a generic teacher, a parent, or a specific person. The proverb serves as the basic building block, and the instruction typically links individual proverbs together to form its discourse. These monologues encourage disciples to listen and make this teaching part of their lives. Proverbs 1–7 provide clear examples of the didactic monologue, and Lady Wisdom adds her own monologue in 8:1-36.

These teachers instruct by insistently contrasting the wise and the wicked, also by using the imperative to instruct or correct, as in Prov 4:13-14 (Schipper, 28-29).

Keep hold of instruction; do not let go;
guard her, for she is your life.
Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of evildoers.

In Psalm 1, an anonymous wisdom figure defines the wise in contrast to the wicked. The anonymity gives the speaker authority like that of the omniscient narrator. In Psalm 37, the psalmist, an older and more experienced person (37:25), speaks in the first person and gives an authoritative instruction to an unspecified “you.”

In Psalm 73, we hear a very personal voice. The psalmist struggles to make sense of the rewards received by the wicked. Though the psalm affirms wisdom’s order for the righteous, the psalmist comes to a deeper spiritual insight:

But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the LORD God my refuge.

Whatever the fortunes of the good or the wicked, this psalmist glories in being near to God.

c. the phrase: Happy is the one who…

The formula, “Happy the one who …,” appears often in wisdom literature. It opens the Book of Psalms, and appears another twenty-eight times, as in Ps 84:4-5:

“Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise.”

The Hebrew word ˀashre (pronounced: ash-ray) means “happy, fortunate.” The Greek Septuagint translated ˀashre as makarios, which has a more transcendent and religious dimension. The Greek word comes into English as “blessed,” and we find it in the beatitudes of the New Testament (Matt.5:3-11; Luke 6:21-22).

d. wisdom psalms

The term “wisdom psalms” appears as a category in some biblical scholarship, but the category’s defining feature is the theme of wisdom rather than any linguistic form or pattern. Gillingham uses instead the category of “didactic psalms” because of their strong instructional tone. In this category, she includes Psalms 1, 19, 37, 49, 73, 112, 119, 127, 128, 139.

Wisdom literature embraces a diverse collection of books that consider wisdom and its relation to the Torah from different points of view. Though common threads run through this literature, its focus on daily life with its changing situations brings ever-shifting perspectives.

14.4. Exercises for Chapter 14

Vocabulary

• proverb: a memorable saying, which in the Bible typically comes as a couplet of parallel lines. §14.3a
• wisdom instruction or monology: a didactic speech by a wisdom figure, constructed of linking proverbs. §14.3b

Questions

1. Wisdom literature moves by contrasts: the good and the wicked, the wise and the foolish, the just and the unjust, the righteous and the unrighteous, the blessed and the cursed. Choose one of the following texts and show how it creates these contrasts: Psalm 73, 100, 112

2. Proverbs 1:1-19 sets forth an understanding of wisdom. What are its key elements? Does that sound right to you, or does it raise questions?

3. Choose a single proverb from Proverbs 10 and make a close reading that explains why it appeals to you.