Today we begin a new sermon series looking at the book of Proverbs, which is part of the wisdom literature of the Hebrew scriptures, and I’ll explain exactly what that means in a moment. We are undertaking this series for several reasons. The first is that I track what scripture readings I preach on, and there were some glaring holes in areas of scripture that we had not covered in my four years here. We obviously do fine on the gospels, and other areas of the New Testament, although I’ve been a little light on what are known as the general epistles, or the letters not written by Paul, which we’ll cover at some point, but there were clearly large gaps in the Hebrew scriptures. One of those was in the prophets, which we made some dents in by looking at the 12 minor prophets in the spring, but then there is a lack in the histories, cover books like Kings, Chronicles and Samuel, and then the wisdom literature.
Wisdom literature as we find it in the Bible, is “an umbrella term that encompasses humanity’s quest to understand and organize reality, to find answers to basic existential questions, and to pass that information along from one generation to another.” It seeks to provide both instruction for how we are to live our lives, but also exploration or explanation about the way the world works, especially around the problem of suffering. The books of the wisdom literature include the book of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, which is also sometimes known as Quoheleth, as the name Ecclesiastes comes from the Latin name of the book, whereas in Hebrew it’s called Quoheleth, and then Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, a series of love poems that the rabbis said no one should be allowed to read until they were adults, with the age of 35 sometimes thrown around. Sometimes the Psalms are included with the wisdom literature as well, but while there are some Psalms that have the marks of wisdom literature, scholars are not in agreement on which those are, but do say they are not the majority of Psalms, and so are more often not listed as wisdom literature. There are some other books in the apocrypha which are also counted as wisdom literature, but since they are not part of the Protestant cannon of scripture, that is the accepted books, we’re not going to address them now.
King Solomon is usually seen as the author of the wisdom of much of wisdom literature because he was seen as having wisdom, having been told by God to ask for what he wanted, and Solomon asked for wisdom above everything else. It is said that he spoke 3000 proverbs, and composed 1000 songs, and so these collections are attributed to him. Now did he write all them that we have? No. We know that first because some of them are attributed to other people, some of them are near duplicates of proverbs from other ancient near-eastern cultures, Egypt, that predate Solomon. But also, because the sense of authorship in the ancient world is very different than what we imagine now, and so if there was a saying that correctly conveyed wisdom, it would be attributed to Solomon, because he was seen as the personification of this type of wisdom. However, this is not true of Job, which has no author attribution. If Solomon did indeed compose Proverbs, or at least much of it, and there is nothing to indicate that he didn’t, and also the book of Ecclesiastes, we should note that there is a radical difference between these two works. While Proverbs has been seen as being optimistic, sometimes overly so, Ecclesiastes has a pessimistic or cynical mood, conveyed in the first lines, “vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” But the differences there are for another day, as for the next six weeks we focus our attention on Proverbs.
The first thing to say is that the books contains more than just proverbs, which we might see as short, pithy sayings that convey some truth about living. But, the book also contains admonitions, things to do or don’t do, as well as instruction, which involves the first 9 chapters of the book, and where our passage from this morning is from. Then starts what people typically think of as proverbs. It’s clear that the book is a collection of sayings that were compiled over time, and there is not any definite organization to them, or at least nothing that matches a modern conception of organization. There are also duplicate or nearly duplicate sayings found throughout the book. So, it appears as if they were collected but rather than trying to combine them, they editors just made sure to include all of them. But here are some important things to keep in mind.
The first is that we so lose something in translation. In our own proverbs, there is strong use of alliteration and rhyming. Think of a stitch in time saves… nine. Why nine? Why not ten or eight? Because nine gives a rhyming characteristic that makes it easier to remember. Or Look before you… leap. Alliteration. The same thing is happening in the Hebrew, but we miss that in translation. There are also some other poetic pieces that are used, which we’ll discuss when we get to the view of the ideal woman in Proverbs 31. In addition, each proverb has its own context in which it was created and for the people it was said to. Sometimes we know that context and sometimes we don’t, and so there will occasionally be proverbs that are hard to understand because their context might not apply to us anymore. A modern example, or this is more of an aphorism, and that is the saying that when you hit two keys on the typewriter at the same time, the letter you don’t want is the one that will hit the page. Now for those of us who have used a typewriter, that makes total sense, but for younger generations that has totally lost its meaning. So, we need to pay attention to that, but sometimes even when it might not be the same context we can still figure out a way that it applies to us.
And it is the context that is another key point to consider, and that is that while proverbs do contain some truth in them, they are not universal truths. That is, they are not good at all times and in all situations, and so we will get proverbs that contradict each other. A great example is two that appear right together in chapter 26. Verse 4 says “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself.” Then verse 5 says “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.” So, are we supposed to challenge fools, or not challenge fools? The answer is yes. We see the same things in modern proverbs. We say that haste makes waste, but he who hesitates is lost. Old dogs can’t learn new tricks, but it’s never too late to learn. Too many cooks spoil the soup, but many hands make for light work. The early bird catches the worm, but it’s the second mouse who gets the cheese. Each of those statements is true in their own situations, and so how do we know when it’s right? Well that’s where wisdom comes in, as Proverbs says, “Like a thorn bush brandished by the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.” 26:9 So, proverbs are for everyone, except for fools, which makes these a little different than just general instruction.
Now I’m guessing few of you know this because I never talk about it, but I went to Harvard, and as they say in Massachusetts there are some wicked smart people at, but having lots of knowledge does not mean that you are necessarily smart, right? I’ve known some really smart people who do really stupid things, or we might say don’t have much common sense. In the words of proverbs, they don’t have much wisdom. So here’s the difference. Knowing that tomatoes are a fruit is about knowledge. Knowing not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad is about wisdom. The other piece is that wisdom is both a human task and a divine gift. All wisdom comes from God, even if the source is not one we’d normally attribute to God, and pursuing wisdom must be part of our faith lives, our faith journey. Secondly, wisdom is linked to action. It’s not just to be accumulated for accumulation sake, simply to know it, but to live it out.
What wisdom tells us, or what God tells us is that there are two paths that we can choose, two ways we can go in life. We can follow wisdom, or the way of God, or we can follow the way of folly, which is not God’s ways. There is no moral equivalency here, no two sides of the arguments. We have to choose which way we will go, and in Proverbs this is personified by Woman Wisdom and Woman Folly. So, let me say, if you are in a group, for whatever reason, and they are carrying Nazi flags, and making Nazi salutes, and chanting Nazi slogans, and other anti-Semitic and racist chants, and you don’t leave, then you have lost your moral standing. There are not good people in that group. But, simultaneously, we refuse to listen to them and the pain and anger they have, for whatever reason, at our own peril. Just shouting them down will not make them go away, and responding to them with hate will only make them stronger, will talk about the destructive power of anger and of words next week. People will often say looking back on past events “If I had been there, I would have been different. I would have done something.” I think this is one of those moments where people will ask later “what did you do” and, hopefully, we can say that we followed the path of wisdom, the path of God, and not the path of folly.
The book of Proverbs tells us right at the start what it’s purpose is “For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young— let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill.” It is to teach firstly, the young, and young men, remembering its context, but also those who are already wise, that we are never done learn about wisdom. And then the comes what has been seen as sort of the subheading of Proverbs, verse 7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” I’m guessing that many of you have heard or know that verse, even if you didn’t know it was from proverbs. This is important to understand in order to understand the proverbs, because the wisdom of the proverbs does not exist outside of God. To be wise requires God. God is wisdom and wisdom is God, and so to pursue wisdom is to pursue God. But to parse this even further we’re going to start at the end of this sentence, which is the beginning. That is that fear of the lord is not the end, but the beginning of wisdom. It is merely the place where we start, where the relationship begins.
In the Hebrew scriptures, wisdom is feminine, and in Proverbs, in particular, as I said, is embodied as a woman, woman wisdom. We’ll discuss this idea more in the next weeks, but one the reasons speculated why wisdom is personified as a woman, and we have to remember that these works were originally written by men and for men, is that wisdom was something to strive after and to be in a relationship with, and so personifying wisdom as a woman makes some sense in teaching young men about wisdom. That’s not the only reason I think wisdom is feminine, but it appears to be one of the reasons. So, we are called to be in relationship with wisdom, and to have the same intimacy with it as wisdom has with God. There is a bind that builds up between us and wisdom as we deeper our understanding of wisdom, and the path that we are called to take and to live. Again, Provers wants us to know that we get to choose the path we want to follow: wisdom or folly. The right way or the wrong way. And so, this is a continual journey that we undertake. It is not a one-time event, and it is something we are always striving toward, wisdom is better than acquiring either gold or silver, and part of that wisdom is to know how much more there is for us to learn.
So, working to acquire wisdom is the beginning which starts with the fear of the Lord, or the fear of God. Just as a translation aside, if you see Lord in all caps, that is the translation of the letters that we know as Yahweh, whereas Elohim and other names for God in Hebrew commonly get translated as God, that’s the difference. But what does it mean to fear the Lord? Is it that we are supposed to be afraid? That’s often how it comes off, after all that’s what fear means in English, and it’s how some churches talk about it, but how do we fear someone we are supposed to love, or who is supposed to love us? There is a piece of genuine fear that plays into our relationship with God, especially as we think about judgment. That we should, as Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God as a judge should bring some fear into our lives, and yet simultaneously, we have to remember scriptures injunction that while God is righteous and is judge, that God “is merciful and slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression.” So, it is right to fear judgment, but also knowing God’s divine mercy and grace, which is why this sense of fear is often met in scripture with the injunction to “fear not” which turns us to the other meaning of fear in Hebrew which is that of reverence or awe or mystery or wonder of even worship.
If you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon, or some other place that’s just awe inspiring and you fall silent in the moment because you don’t even know how to respond, you’re just overcome with feelings and emotions, that too is the sense of fear of God. So that worship of God, or reverence of God, or the awe of God, the mystery of God, the understanding that God is bigger than what we can even imagine and so far outside of who we are, that we know the only appropriate response is to fall to our knees. Eugene Peterson translates this passage as saying, “start with God – the first step to leaning is bowing down to God.” Humility plays a large role in the proverbs, because it is only when we are humble and open to new ideas, that it’s not about us and we don’t know it all, that we can then truly begin to worship God. So, if worship of God is the beginning of wisdom, what are our stumbling blocks? Where do we need to turn something in our lives over to God? Where are we looking for new wisdom in our life? Are we ready to receive new wisdom even if we are old dogs? There is an old saying that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Are we ready to bow down to God in reverence and awe so that we can begin the journey to wisdom? I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment