The key to the book of Proverbs (Proverbs blog #1)

 Proverbs – a tricky book

I have spent more time in the book of Proverbs than any other book over the last few years. I have loved it, with my love increasing over time as I have understood it better and had more time to think upon it (though I have a lot more of both still to do!).

But I imagine my personal experience with Proverbs was similar to many other Christians – it started with utter confusion! I could just about follow chapters 1-9, but then when I hit the wall of proverb after proverb after proverb from chapter 10 onwards, my mind melted. While I could find encouragement from the individual proverb here or there, I had no sense of how they fitted together, and was lightyears away from seeing a coherent message from the book as a whole. Proverbs is a tricky book!

Proverbs – a precious book

Thankfully, the book has felt less and less tricky and more and more precious to me over these last few years of thinking. The aim of this series of blogs is to share things I have found helpful in understanding the book as a whole, that it may help others understand it better too and so grow in fear of the LORD and his king.

Blogs 2, 3 and 4 will look at how other parts of the Old Testament can help us in understanding Proverbs and enrich its message. But blog 1 – this blog – will look at the introduction to the book that the book gives us itself in 1:1-7. Here are those verses (ESV):

1 The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:

2 To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight,
3 To receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity;
4 To give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth–

5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance,
6 to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.

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

What is the key to understanding Proverbs?

When Proverbs feels tricky to understand, this introduction is a good place to start. It functions as a lens for understanding the whole book. And it has 3 main steps:[1]

Step 1: If you want to be wise… (v2-4)

Verses 2-4 are the results that Proverbs is designed to produce in the reader, intensifying with each verse.

Verse 2 – to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight. If you want to know what is wise, to understand true insight – this book is for you.

Verse 3 – to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity. If you want not only to know what is wise but to actually do what is wise – if you want to do what is right and just and fair in your actions and conduct – this book is for you.

Verse 4 – to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. If you want not only to know wisdom, and to do wisdom, but also to teach and impart wisdom to others – this book is for you.

Here is a book that makes you wise. It teaches you to know wisdom, to do wisdom, to teach wisdom to others. This is an ambition I imagine nearly everyone wants to be true of them. We long to be wise – in our thinking, in our action, in our help of others – and that is what this book can make us.

Here is the goal of Proverbs. But the introduction doesn’t stop there – instead, it tells us how we can read this book in such a way that we get these results. It tells us how to read Proverbs in a way that actually makes us wise.

Step 2: …then listen to this crucial guidance for understanding the book… (v5-6)

Verse 5 is a marked change from verses 2-4. In grammatical terms, we move from infinitives (to know… to receive… to give) to a command: let the wise hear. Verse 5 is calling us to listen up if we want to become wise.

Specifically, it wants us to listen to guidance: ‘let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance’.

And this guidance is specifically about understanding the book of Proverbs: ‘to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles’.

The author of Proverbs knows that it is a tricky book to understand – he describes its contents as riddles! Hence he wants to give us guidance to navigate the proverbs and the riddles, so that we understand them rather than end up confused. He wants to give us a key – a lens – a map – through which we can understand everything in these 31 chapters. So, if we want to be wise, we need to listen to this key.

Step 3: … that wisdom is all about the fear of the LORD (v7)

Here is the key to this book: ‘the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction’. This is the key/lens/map that the author of Proverbs gives us for understanding his book in a way that makes us wise.

The fear of the LORD is a really important phrase in Proverbs, and a really important idea in the Old Testament. There is a lot that could be said about what it means, and I aim to write a blog on it in the future. But on a very simple level, it describes a life where you know the LORD is God, and more than that, where you know the LORD enough that you fear him – he isn’t distant and irrelevant, but makes a significant tangible difference to every day of your life.

And Proverbs wants to say that the very start of being wise – the very start of even knowing or understanding anything in this world – is knowing the LORD as God and fearing him. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.

This is a striking comment given how our world thinks about wisdom. We can think that the people with knowledge and understanding in our world are the people with PhDs. We can think that the people with wisdom in our world are the successful entrepreneurs. But this key to the book defines things very differently – the child who fears the LORD knows and understands far more about life than the atheist professor at Cambridge University. The illiterate, impoverished man who fears the LORD is far wiser than the billion-dollar company CEO who thinks Christianity is irrelevant. If you want to have any meaningful knowledge, understanding or wisdom in your life, it has to start with fearing the LORD.

If you are reading this and you wouldn’t call yourself a Christian, I hope you can see how radical the Bible is in its view of God. Not something to maybe think about before you die, nor something that perhaps matters for 1 hour a week at a church service: God is completely central and foundational to life. Christianity is not just a set of moral rules, but is focused on personally knowing the Creator of the world – and that is what the Bible helps us do. If you are interested in knowing more about what God is like according to the Bible, please do send me a message – I would love to chat more about it.

Back to the key to the book: the second half of verse 7 is also important – fools despise wisdom and instruction. This makes sense given the first half of the verse – if wisdom and instruction is centred on the LORD, then it makes sense that some people despise it. Those who don’t fear the LORD hate wisdom, because they have rejected the very first building block of it – the LORD. The world is not 100% filled with wisdom-seekers – actually, lots of people despise true wisdom, because lots of people aren’t interested in fearing the LORD.

How does this key help us understand Proverbs?

Before taking time to study Proverbs in depth, I often heard it summarised as a book filled with ‘top tips for living in this world’. So, if you want to know wisdom about how to work well, or how to manage/use your money well, or how to make the right sort of friends, then this book is for you. People often say that where other books might be overly theological, Proverbs is super practical – getting down to the business of living well in this world.

It sounds compelling, and there definitely is some value in that content. However, this key to the book should make us suspicious of thinking of Proverbs as primarily a practical book to help people live well in this world, without having much focus on theology. Proverbs itself starts by telling us that the key, the foundation, the beating heart to wisdom and knowledge is the fear of the LORD. If we want to become wise in how we think and in what we do, the author of Proverbs thinks we need to look at the LORD God and understand him better; we need to fear him.

But rather than just correcting one view of Proverbs, this key should make reading this book immensely exciting. Proverbs is so much more than a book of top tips – it is a book that wants to establish us in knowing and fearing the LORD God. And as it does that, it will make us wise in how we think and in how we act and in how we help others. In other words, Proverbs is an incredibly Christian book – helping us look to the LORD God and finding all our help and growth in him. By remembering this key as we read Proverbs, we will be able to understand all of its riddles and sayings in a way that makes us wise.

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

Let me know your thoughts, including ways to make these blogs more helpful, in the comments below, or feel free to message me privately. Stay tuned for blog #2 and a trip back to 1,400 BC…

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[1] Before the introduction’s content in verses 2-7 comes the title of the book in verse 1. I am not touching on that in this blog as it will be covered more fully in blog 3.