Proverbs: A Commentary

By Richard J. Clifford

Through translation, technical notes, and insightful commentary, Richard Clifford sheds new understanding on Proverbs. By focusing on the rhetoric of Proverbs, Clifford demonstrates how the book fosters a lifelong search for wisdom, and enables readers to see how the instructions and sayings are concerned with contemporary issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 1999
• ISBN: 9781611645149

Richard J. Clifford

Richard J. Clifford, S.J. is Visiting Professor of Old Testament at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. A former President of Weston Jesuit School of Theology, he was Founding Dean of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry from 2008-2010. He has previously served as General Editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly and is a past President of the Catholic Biblical Association.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The book of Proverbs consists of several collections of instructions, speeches, poems, and two-line sayings. The titles of the collections are 1:1; 10:1; 22:17 (and its appendix 24:23); 25:1; 30:1; 31:1. There is no title to the concluding poem in 31:10–31, but it is clearly marked off by its alphabetic structure. The title in 1:1, The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel, is the heading not only of chaps. 1–9 but of the entire book, for the sum of the numerical values of its Hebrew consonants is 930, which is close to the actual 934 lines of the book.

The present book has nine sections.

Introduction to the Book (1:1–7)

      I. Collection of Wisdom Lectures and Speeches (1:8–9:18)

  1. Lecture I: The Deadly Alternative to Parental Wisdom (1:8–19)

  2. Wisdom Poem I: The Risk of Spurning Me (1:20–33)

  3. Lecture II: Seek Wisdom and Yahweh Will Keep You Safe (2:1–22)

  4. Lecture III: Trust in God Leads to Prosperity (3:1–12)

  5. Interlude: Wisdom’s Benefits and Prestige (3:13–20)

  6. Lecture IV: Justice toward the Neighbor Brings Blessing (3:21–35)

  7. Lecture V: A Father’s Example (4:1–9)

  8. Lecture VI: Two Ways of Living Life (4:10–19)

  9. Lecture VII: With Your Whole Being Heed My Words and Live (4:20–27)

10. Lecture VIII: The Wrong and the Right Woman (5:1–23)

11. Interlude: Four Short Pieces (6:1–19)

12. Lecture IX: The Dangers of Adultery (6:20–35)

13. Lecture X: The Deceptive Woman (7:1–27)

14. Wisdom Poem II: Become My Disciple and I Will Bless You (8:1–36)

15. Wisdom Poem III: The Two Women Invite Passersby to Their Banquets (9:1–6 + 11; 13–18; vv. 7–10 + 12 are assorted sayings)

     II. The Proverbs of Solomon (10:1–22:16)

   III. The Words of the Wise (22:17–24:22)

    IV. Further Words of the Wise (24:23–34)

     V. Further Proverbs of Solomon, Collected by the Servants of King Hezekiah (chaps. 25–29).

   VI. The Words of Agur, and Four Sorts of Scroundrels (30:1–14)

 VII. Numerical Sayings (30:15–33)

VIII. The Words to Lemuel, King of Massa (31:1–9)

   IX. Hymn to the Capable Wife (31:10–31)

Collecting, or anthologizing, traditional material in the ancient Near East was a recognized way of creating new literary works. There are many examples of artistic anthologizing. In Mesopotamia, lengthy literary works such as Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, and Enuma elish contained old stories worked into a new synthesis. Biblical examples are the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to Kings), and the Isaiah scroll. Anthologists reorganized inherited material in the light of new concepts and purposes; they altered, added, and subtracted characters, plots, and themes. In Mesopotamia, for example, legends of King Gilgamesh were reworked into an epic about a hero’s search for immortality. Biblical anthologist-authors of the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to Kings) wove stories of local heroes, an account of the rise of David, and official chronicles into a long history of Israel from Sinai to the exile. Similarly, the author-editors of Proverbs not only collected instructions and sayings but also rearranged and reshaped them.

The material was given fresh meaning through the new juxtapositions. The ten instructions of chaps. 1–9, for example, resemble Egyptian and Mesopotamian instructions typically addressed to youths beginning their public careers. The instructions are now juxtaposed to speeches of a personified Woman Wisdom seeking disciples. The novel placement elevates Proverbs’ instructions to a metaphorical level, making them suitable to an audience much wider than young men. Exhortations to act prudently and be faithful to home and profession (traditional aims of the instruction) are broadened into exhortations to seek wisdom before everything else in life. Once the metaphorical level has been established in chaps. 1–9, the sayings and poems in the following chapters gain depth and breadth. Traditional elements appear in a new configuration.

The configuration is dominated by a polarity. In chaps. 1–9, the most important polarity is that between Woman Wisdom and the deceptive woman. The book itself highlights this polarity by its summarizing diptych in chap. 9, where the two women are like debaters. Wisdom makes her final appeal in vv. 1–6, 11 and Folly makes hers in vv. 13–18.¹ It should be noted, however, that the deceptive woman is only one of two enemies of Wisdom. As chap. 2 makes clear, her two enemies are deceptive men and their way (always plural, 1:8–19; 2:12–15; 4:10–19) and the deceptive woman (always singular, 2:16–19; chap. 5; 6:20–35; chap. 7; 9:13–18). There are other polarities as well: the male father (both parents in 1:8 and 6:20) and female Wisdom (see below). A final and pervasive polarity is the two ways—the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked.

By the end of chap. 2 an interpretive system has been established and the main polarities introduced. Proverbs 1:8–19 introduces the father (and mother), the deceptive men, and the two ways; 1:20–33 introduces personified Wisdom; chap. 2 introduces the quest for wisdom and identifies the twin dangers of deceptive men (vv. 12–15) and the deceptive woman (vv. 16–19). By the end of chap. 2, therefore, the major actors and concepts have been presented; they will remain in productive opposition until the end of the section. Chapter 9 closes the whole section by pitching one woman against the other.

Chapters 2 through 9 introduce no new major actor or topic. Rather one finds here elaborations of what has been sketched in chaps. 1–2: a second speech of Wisdom (chap. 8) and an encomium of Wisdom and her benefits (3:13–20), three warnings against the deceptive woman (chap. 5; 6:20–35; chap. 7), and six parental speeches to the son (3:1–12, 21–35; 4:1–9, 10–19, 20–27; 6:1–19), as well as the father’s warning against the men and their way (4:10–19). By this time, readers are sufficiently familiar with the relationships to draw their own conclusions.

1. Date of Composition and Editing

Three times King Solomon (mid-tenth century B.C.E.) is said to be the author of Proverbs (1:1) or of independent collections (10:1; 25:1). The references cannot be used to date the book, however, for wisdom literature was conventionally ascribed to Solomon, as psalms were ascribed to David and laws to Moses. There is no reason, however, to doubt that some of the book is by Solomon, for as king he would have collected, sponsored, or possibly even written, various kinds of writing, including literature (belles lettres), as 1 Kings 4:29–31 recognizes.

Proverbs contains an important chronological clue in 25:1: These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of King Hezekiah collected. Hezekiah was king of Judah from 715 to 687 B.C.E. and was reckoned a reformer by 1 Kings 18–20 and especially by 2 Chronicles 29–32. Proverbs 25:1 states that the king added proverbs to an already existing collection under King Solomon’s name. The title headed at least chaps. 25–26, for these chapters are an artistic unity (see under 25:1). To what Solomonic collection were Hezekiah’s proverbs added? Probably all or part of the proverbs of Solomon in 10:1–22:16. Thus the book itself says that by the late eighth century B.C.E. there existed a collection of proverbs of Solomon to which royal scribes added a second collection.

Attempts have been made to date Proverbs from other data—its language, editing devices, and themes—but none of these provides assured results. To date Proverbs from its language one must determine to which period of the Hebrew language the book belongs. Two phases of the language are generally distinguished prior to the rise of rabbinic Hebrew as a literary language in the first or second centuries C.E.: (1) preexilic Hebrew (= pre-sixth century B.C.E.), which ceased to be a living language after the Babylonian exile; (2) Late Biblical Hebrew (in the later books of the Bible), which was to some extent an imitation of the preexilic language.² The majority of scholars believe that the bulk of the sayings of Proverbs are preexilic or exilic (= Biblical Hebrew) and that most of the instructions and speeches (chaps. 1–9) as well as the final editing are postexilic (= Late Biblical Hebrew).

One can readily see the difficulty of determining where the Hebrew of Proverbs fits within this broad classification. For one thing, Late Biblical Hebrew is often imitative of earlier Hebrew, and, for another, archaic features of aphorisms are readily modernized by copyists. An example of modernizing is the rhetorical question in 22:29 (cf. 29:20): "Do you see (ḥāzîtā) a man skilled in his craft?" In 26:12, the more ancient word ḥāzîtā is modernized to rā’îtā: "Have you seen (rā’îtā) a man wise in his own eyes?"

Proverbs contains some early linguistic features. Among possibly early features are the use of the negative bal (about ten times), the qal passive (e.g., 10:24 and 13:11, unrecognized by the Masoretes), and the archaic words pā‘al (to do instead of ‘āśāh), geber, man, and ḥārûṣ, gold. Further indications of a preexilic date are the sparing use of the object marker ‘et (only fifteen times) and of the relative ’ăšer (only eleven times). The article, which is not used in early poetry, occurs only about 53 times (compared to nearly 400 instances in the Psalms).³

Proverbs has some Aramaisms but these in themselves are no argument for a late date, for they are also found sporadically in preexilic texts. A large number in a book, however, would suggest a postexilic date when Aramaic became the language of commerce and government. Those listed by Max Wagner in his study do not constitute an argument for a late date for the book, for many are preexilic, as Wagner himself acknowledges.⁴ There are no Grecisms in the book, which suggests a pre-Hellenistic date (before 333 B.C.E.). In sum, the book cannot be dated with certainty from its language.⁵

Another possible means of dating Proverbs is its consonant-numbers. The final editor(s) of Proverbs used numerology to underline the unity of the book and to let copyists know its original parameters, or perhaps simply as an encoded structure in chaps. 10 and 25–26 (see commentary below). P. W. Skehan developed an observation made by earlier scholars that the numerical values of the Hebrew letters of The Proverbs of Solomon in 10:1 add up to 375 (š = 300; 1 = 30; m = 40; h = 5), which happens to be the number of single-line proverbs in 10:1–22:16. Moreover, the superscription to the entire book in 1:1, The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, adds up to 930, which is close to the 934 lines of the present book. The numerical editing evident in 1:1 could only have been done on the complete book as we know it. Consonant-numbers are not attested before the second century B.C.E., which might indicate a late date for the final editing. Unfortunately, however, consonant numbers may have been used much earlier than the second century and thus cannot be used for precise dating.

Another way of dating the book is through its themes, but this approach does not provide sure results either. The argument, for example, that tôrāh, law, teaching, and miṣwāh, command, in Proverbs refer to the Torah of Moses, which would presuppose the missions of Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century B.C.E., is unconvincing. Law and command in Proverbs do not refer to the Mosaic Torah, as is pointed out under 28:4, 7, 9, 18. In Proverbs, the words lack concreteness and specificity and refer not to judicial or cultic norms but to prudent advice (which is nonetheless considered inspired and from God).⁶

Some scholars propose that the warnings to young men to avoid relationships with foreign women (zārāh, nokrîyāh) reflect the prohibitions in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah against marriages with foreigners who were outside the lineage of the father’s house.⁷ Such warnings against the foreign woman, however, are attested in the Egyptian Instruction of Any and there are similar Babylonian warnings against unsuitable partners for moral reasons. Moreover, Proverbs’ warnings are not against exogamous marriages but against extramarital affairs. Readers in the Second Temple period may well have read the warnings against the foreign woman with exogamy in mind (it was a concern of the period), but it does not follow that the texts themselves were written with that purpose. Consequently, the prohibitions cannot be used for dating the composition of chaps. 1–9.

Despite the difficulty of assigning a specific date for the final redaction of Proverbs, it is possible to give a very general sketch of the development of the book. With the rise of the monarchy in the early tenth century, palace scribes would have produced diplomatic and liturgical texts as well as the kind of belles lettres (including wisdom texts) current in Levantine courts. By the late eighth century, a collection attributed to Solomon was in circulation when the servants of Hezekiah added a second collection to it (25:1). By this time, presumably, the familiar two-line saying had become a subgenre. The saying employed the contrasting types of the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, the impious and the devout. The Words of the Wise (22:17–24:22), because of its obvious indebtedness to the Egyptian instruction Amenemope, was most likely written during the period of trade and cultural exchange with Egypt during the monarchy (cf. 24:21 "Fear Yahweh and the king, my son"). In short, it is quite probable that all (or a substantial part) of chaps. 10–29 were in circulation before the end of the monarchy.

At what period chaps. 1–9 were written and prefaced to the anthology is difficult to say. There are no allusions to historical events in the chapters and linguistic and thematic arguments are not conclusive. The argument that the long poems are later than the brief sayings has no validity in view of the coexistence of instructions and sayings in early literatures. Given the lack of evidence for the final editing, perhaps the best course is to suppose that Proverbs was edited in the same general movement as much of Israel’s other sacred literature in the early Second Temple period, that is, in the period from the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C.E.⁸ The consonant-numbers in the titles suggest an editor who believed the book had its own unity and wanted to give it final definition.

2. Historical Context

The authorship and the audience of Proverbs have been much debated over the last four decades. Before the 1960s it was generally assumed that the book was the work of sages, who were assumed to have been a distinct group in Israel on the basis of Jer. 18:18; Prov. 1:5; 22:17; 24:23; Job 15:18. In the 1960s, H. J. Hermisson proposed that wisdom literature was composed for use in Israelite schools connected to the royal court.⁹ A competing theory, represented by C. Westermann and F. W. Golka among others, proposes that the middle section of Proverbs (chaps. 10–29) were mostly oral sayings originating in the daily life of ordinary people such as farmers, artisans, laborers, slaves, and housewives in preexilic times.¹⁰

Neither theory is adequate as a complete explanation. Proponents of a school origin for Proverbs point to Egyptian analogies. However, Egyptian wisdom literature was used in schools, not composed for them.¹¹ Egyptian authors were not school teachers, but fathers teaching their sons. Likewise, the teacher in Proverbs is not a school teacher but a father (with the mother in 1:8 and 6:2), an identity that is especially evident in 4:3–4.

The theory that holds chaps. 10–29 were originally oral sayings of villagers and farmers correctly highlights the origin within the family for some proverbs. A village or family origin cannot be inferred from the contents of the proverbs, however. Though some topics are at home in farm and field, the perspective is that of a royal court. Proverbs 11:26 speaks of farming from the view of the wealthy: Who holds back grain the people damn, / but blessings are on the head of one who sells it. The perspective is often that of kings and courtiers (16:14; 23:1–11; especially 25:2–7).

What is the most likely social location of Proverbs? As 25:1 suggests, the men of Hezekiah collected them. They were employees of the palace charged with writing and recording—in other words, scribes. The best proof is the sophistication of the writing and the familiarity with foreign literature evident in the sayings and instructions. The statement of M. Fox puts the matter well: "Learned clerks, at least some of them the king’s men, were the membrane through which principles, sayings and coinages, folk and otherwise, were filtered. The central collections of Proverbs are their filtrate, an essentially homogeneous one: In the end, it is their work and their idea of wisdom that we are reading, and it is, not surprisingly, quite coherent."¹²

In sum, the book of Proverbs is an anthology of collections of sayings (some of which were folk in origin) and instructions. The authors were scribes of the royal court who were responsible for the production of literature for temple and court. As Fox suggests, one should not think of them as courtiers but as working scribes, clerics or clerks in the medieval sense.

3. The Wisdom Literature That Proverbs Inherited

The authors of Proverbs were heirs to a centuries-old tradition of wisdom literature.¹³ Included in the tradition were the two major genres found in Proverbs—the instruction of a father to a son and the concise saying. Father-son instructions are attested as far back as the third millennium both in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, and proverbs are well-nigh universal. In Mesopotamia, more than twenty-eight collections of Sumerian proverbs are attested (third and second millennia) as well as Akkadian collections. Though Egypt does not have any proverbial collections as such, some proverbs are found within the instructions.

Three Assumptions of Ancient Wisdom

Before examining the instructions and sayings, we should note three assumptions of ancient authors: Wisdom was (1) practical, (2) mediated through a hierarchy of agencies, and (3) institutional.

1. Wisdom had to do with practical rather than theoretical knowledge—knowing how to do something, savoir faire. A king was wise because he knew how to govern well (ars gubernandi, the art of governing), wage war effectively, and give the right decisions. A jeweler was wise because he knew how to cut and set gems; a woman was wise because she knew how to manage a household.

Wisdom could also refer to culture as well as to craft. The beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a particular group were considered as given, part of the order of creation. They were thus informed by wisdom, for God made the world in wisdom.

2. Wisdom belonged to the gods and was mediated through a succession of agents to human beings.¹⁴ The process of mediation was particularly clear in Mesopotamia. All the gods were wise but one god in particular was preeminently so. This god, Ea (Enki in Sumerian), shared his expertise and clever proposals with the other deities. The gods created the human race as their servants and gave to them the knowledge and culture (e.g., writing, metallurgy, farming, rituals) they needed to live properly as human beings and be good servants of the gods.

Mesopotamian mythological texts speak of seven sages (apkallu) who brought knowledge and culture to the human race in the period before the Flood. After the Flood they were succeeded by seven sages (ummānu), according to some ritual texts. Human participation grew progressively greater in the transmission of divine knowledge to the human race. At the end of the chain of transmission was the Babylonian school that was run by learned scribes.

Human beings needed wisdom from the gods to be civilized and to be good servants of the gods. Some Mesopotamian creation accounts even depicted the creation of man in two stages. In the first stage, the race lived in an animal state; only in the second stage did human beings receive the necessary culture (writing, farming, kingship, tools) to live at a human level.¹⁵ Wisdom was thus thoroughly religious. The point needs stressing because some scholars have asserted that biblical wisdom literature was originally secular, only later becoming religious by being linked to religious traditions such as the exodus, Sinai covenant, and the prophets.¹⁶ The fact is, rather, that ancient Near Eastern wisdom was always part of a religious worldview.

3. Heavenly wisdom comes to the human race mediated by earthly institutions or authorities such as the king, scribes and the literature the scribes write, and heads of families. In Proverbs, the mediating institutions or authorities are the king, wisdom writings (cf. 1:2, 6), and the father (with the mother in 1:8 and 6:20).

Mesopotamian Wisdom Instructions and Proverbs

The oldest and most widely known Mesopotamian instruction is the Instructions of Shuruppak,¹⁷ in which the primordial hero Shuruppak gives rules of behavior and wise counsel to his son Ziusudra, the Sumerian equivalent of biblical Noah, the survivor of the Flood. Shuruppak gives the race wisdom so it will not again offend the gods and be destroyed by another flood. The Instructions was composed in Sumerian in the mid-third millennium and revised in subsequent editions and in Akkadian translations.

¹In that [day], in that far off day,

in that [ni]ght, in that far dista[nt] night,

in that [year], in that far distant year—

at that time there lived one who possessed wisdom, who (with) artful words,

who knew the (right) word, in the land of Sumer,

⁵Shuruppak lived, who possessed wisdom, who (with) artful words, who knew

the (right) word, in the land of Sumer.

Shuruppak counseled his son,

Shuruppak, the son of Uburtutu,

¹⁰counseled Ziusudra, his son:

"My son, I will counsel (you), may my counsel be accepted,

Ziusudra, a word will I s[ay] to you, may it be heeded!

Do not neglect my counsel,

the word that I have spoken, do not change,

the counsel of a father is precious, may your neck bow before it.

The individual counsels that follow this introduction are one to three lines in length. The Old Babylonian version (ca. 1800–1600 B.C.E.) has 281 lines and is divided into three sections (lines 1–76, 77–146, and 147–281).

The elaborate introduction, repeated twice, serves to place the sayings under the mantle of the hero Shuruppak and his son Ziusudra. The counsels are quite diverse. Some are humorous, others are admonitions; most are metaphorical in the sense of saying one thing in terms of another.

Most of the sentences are counsels to perform, or not perform, a specific action for a stated reason (lines 18, 19, 22–23, 51, 63, 64–65, 132–34; 173–75). Several are observations (lines 66–67, 98–101, 171–72). Generally, the advice is not as specific and detailed as those of Egyptian instructions. Some counsels are blunt (lines 18, 19) but most are indirect and metaphorical. Most of the commands explain why, or give a reason for, the recommended behavior: for example, Do not rape a man’s daughter; she will announce it to the courtyard (line 63). As is very clear from the example, the rationale need not be moral but can be based on pure self-interest—the trouble that comes from criminal behavior.

A Babylonian collection written in Akkadian, called the Counsels of Wisdom, originally consisted of perhaps 160 lines, at least one part of which is addressed to my son. It was written in the Kassite period (ca. 1500–1200 B.C.E.).¹⁹ The son is the typical recipient of instructions in the ancient Near East, though the expression my son is a regular address only in biblical and Mesopotamian literature. Counsels of Wisdom offers advice on a series of topics: improper speech, avoiding strife and placating enemies, kindness to the needy, the danger of favoritism to a slave girl, the danger of marrying a prostitute, the trustworthiness required of a representative, the importance of courteous speech, and the duties and benefits of religion. One topic—avoiding bad companions—is a theme of all wisdom literature and deserves examination.

Lines 21 and 26 give the motive: frivolous companions harm one’s standing in the community by lessening the value of what one says. Similarly, Proverbs counsels the avoidance of evil companions for many of the same reasons (22:24–25; 23:17; 24:1, 19).

Counsels of Wisdom (lines 31–55) warns against getting embroiled in strife and concludes with advice on how to deal with an enemy. We quote lines 42–49 here:

Make peace with your enemies and forswear revenge. Planning evil against another offends the god Marduk. Similar advice against vengeance is given in Prov. 24:17–18 and especially 25:21–22: If your enemy is hungry give him food to eat, / if he is thirsty give him water to drink, / for you will scoop fiery coals upon his head, / and Yahweh will reward you. Proverbs gives a pragmatic reason for not exacting vengeance oneself—it is a divine task and human beings could short-circuit the process to their own hurt (cf. especially 24:17–18).

Because finding a suitable marriage partner is a major theme in Proverbs, it is worth quoting Counsels of Wisdom on the topic (lines 72–79).

The implicit criteria for a marriage partner are loyalty, affection, and obedience; none of the candidates is capable of unlimited loyalty to one husband. Proverbs does not warn against marrying a specific class of woman, however, as does the Counsels.

In addition to the instructions noted above, there were also many collections of proverbs—more than twenty-eight of Sumerian origin alone. The collections include material that would not today be considered proverbial in the strict sense—fables, witty expressions, raillery, and jokes. The collections were used to teach the Sumerian language and its rhetoric and, in the process, inculcate wisdom to the students who studied and copied them. The proverbs are notoriously difficult to interpret because scholars do not understand fully the Sumerian language and because the context escapes us. Some Sumerian proverbs from collections 1 and 7 show some of their concerns and rhetoric.²⁰

These proverbs are obviously broader than modern proverbs. They range from a vignette with a moral to an enigmatic saying. Several display sardonic humor; others seem deliberately mysterious.

Collections 7.14 and 7.15 are comic contrasts—a manicurist who does not attend to his own appearance, and a poor person drinking the drink of the poor while harboring grandiose ambitions. Collection 7.33 illustrates the folly of preferring luxuries over essentials and squandering precious resources. Collection 7.77 is a little story showing reliance on the gods is more effective than reliance on self. Collection 7.98 is a humorous quotation of someone’s preference for staying home over going on an uncomfortable expedition. (Expedition is either military or commercial.) Collection 1:160 is an aphorism on human limit and on divine power.

The Sumerian proverbs apparently did not interest Akkadian scribes of a later era. At any rate, they did not copy the repertory but only certain types. It is unlikely that they would have been known to Levantine scribes.²¹ A few bilingual proverbs (in the Sumerian and Middle Assyrian languages) survive from the Kassite period (ca. 1500–1200 B.C.E.), and there are bilingual proverbs (in the Sumerian and Babylonian languages) from the late period, as well as some independent Akkadian examples.²²

Egyptian Instructions

The instruction was a popular genre throughout the entire history of ancient Egypt. Seventeen examples from different periods have been collected by Hellmut Brunner.²³ The genre seems to have influenced Proverbs. The oldest is the Instruction of Prince Hardjedef, composed ca. 2450–2300 B.C.E. (AEL 1.58–59) and the latest is Papyrus Insinger of the first century C.E. (AEL 3.184–217). The Instruction of Amenemope of ca. 1100 B.C.E. (ANET, 421–25; AEL 2.146–63) influenced Prov. 22:17–24:22.

Egyptian instructions²⁴ were written to assist young people to live happy, prosperous lives and avoid difficulties and mistakes. They give concrete and pragmatic suggestions rather than hold up abstract ideals; for example, Don’t lie to a judge, for telling the truth will render the judge benevolent the next time around; in the long run lies do not work in any case.

The pragmatism and self-interest of such counsels do not mean, however, that Egyptian instructions were secular. On the contrary, they were always religious, for Egyptians believed that the gods implanted an order or dynamism in the world, which they called maat.²⁵ Maat can be translated by different English words—truth, order, justice. It is found in nature (the seasons, fruitfulness) no less than the human world (civic and social order, laws, right relationships within families and professions, among neighbors, and in relation to the king). In Egyptian mythology, maat is personified as the daughter of Re, the sun-god; she is portrayed crouching with a feather on her knees or head. Maat was not revealed but read off the course of the world and communicated through maxims and instructions. To help readers fulfill the demands of maat in every walk of life was the aim of the instructions. Some scholars suggest that maat was the model for personified Wisdom in Proverbs. Some influence is certainly possible, but personified Wisdom in Proverbs has a vigor and personality that goes far beyond the abstract Egyptian goddess.

A final point: the aim of the instructions is to guide the individual rather than to reform society; its readers accepted the world as it was and sought to live according to its rhythms. The instructions do not advocate changing the world but urge individuals to adapt to it.

Some aspects of the instructions are explained by the practices of Egyptian society. The career of the young man to whom they were addressed was played out, at least initially, within the famulus (private secretary) system. Youths entered the households of high officials who trained them in the household. The system was known also in Syria-Palestine: Joseph in the book of Genesis and Ahiqar in Ahiqar began as such private secretaries. The young man served the great personage, establishing a relationship of mutual trust, like Joseph with Potiphar (Gen. 39:2) and Pharaoh (Gen. 41:40). In the world of apprenticeship, fidelity to one’s master was paramount. The famulus system explains the emphasis on some recurrent themes in instructions: delivering messages accurately, avoiding (domestic) quarrels, and guarding against entanglements with women of the household.

In discussing human beings, the instructions use heart as the seat of intelligence. A hard-hearted person lacks good sense, not compassion. The instructions render character dramatically. One’s actions reveal one to be either wise or foolish, heated or cool. Fools do not follow the advice of their father or teacher and thus do not behave according to maat. Wisdom is the result of education and experience as well as of nature. One learns to be wise by hearing (= heeding), an important verb in the exhortations. Egyptian society in most periods was quite open, allowing poor youths to rise to high positions, provided they were teachable and shrewd. For young men from the provinces or from poor households, the instructions were guidebooks to success in the new environment of wealthy households.

The content and tone of the instructions reflected changes within Egyptian society. Instructions of the Old Kingdom (2650–2135 B.C.E.) revolved around the king; but with the decline of kingship and the onset of social disorder in the First Intermediate Period (2135–2040 B.C.E.), the instructions shifted from royal affairs to private concerns. With the restoration of stable monarchy in the Middle Kingdom (2040–1650 B.C.E.), instructions once again stressed loyalty to the king. New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1080 B.C.E.) authors came from all levels of society, for daily business was now conducted by a broad range of people. With the Instruction of Any in the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1550–1305 B.C.E.), concern for the individual and the acquiring of inner peace reappears and dominates the genre down to the Hellenistic and Roman eras. A good measure of societal change is the way success was interpreted. In the Old Kingdom, when courtiers were the intended readers, success meant getting ahead at court. When the readership of instructions became less tied to a particular class, exhortations became more general and more personal—how to live peacefully, avoid suffering, and handle conflicts and disappointments. The Instruction of Amenemope (ca. 1100 B.C.E.) is a good example of this kind of humanism. Relevant portions of it will be commented upon in the commentary under 22:17–24:22.

Syro-Palestinian Wisdom Literature

The most important nonbiblical Syro-Palestinian wisdom text is Ahiqar, which is a narrative of the fall and restoration of the courtier Ahiqar, followed by a collection of about a hundred aphorisms, riddles, fables, instructions, and graded numerical sayings. Ahiqar’s fall at the hands of his treacherous nephew Nadin and restoration to his former office may well have been based on historical fact, though the story has been shaped by the well-known plot of the vindicated courtier, which is found also in the biblical stories of Joseph, Esther, and Daniel. The narrative framework was composed in Aramaic in the seventh century B.C.E. and probably circulated among Aramaic speakers in the Neo-Assyrian court. The sayings seem to be older than the tale. J. Greenfield believes the sayings must be considered a remnant of the lost legacy of West Semitic literature.²⁶ It is noteworthy that Ahiqar, who has experienced many things and suffered much, is celebrated as the author of sayings, exhortations, and wisdom poems. He has been through discipline or paideia, a process of deprivation and reproof that is often the first step to wisdom.

The following excerpts from the sayings give an idea of their range and style.²⁷

Similar awe toward the king is expressed in other passages: ¹⁰⁰Quench not the word of a king; / let it be a balm [for] your [hea]rt. ¹⁰¹A king’s word is gentle, but keener and more cutting than a double-edge dagger. Such sentiments are the standard view of the king in the ancient Near East. The Bible subjects kingship to sharp critique in the prophets but Proverbs, reflects the traditional view:

Ahiqar has a personification of Wisdom (6.94–7.95), which is comparable to those in Proverbs 1, 8, and 9:

The work contains graded numerical sayings, which are a feature of West Semitic style:

Such numerical sayings belong to the age-old West Semitic poetic repertory as in KTU 1.4.III.17–21:

Proverbs has a series of such graded sayings in 30:15–33 and one instance in 6:16–19:

Proverbs’ Adaptations of Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Literature

The previous sections provided a glimpse of the wisdom literature of Israel’s neighbors. This section sketches how Proverbs adapted to its own purposes two of the genres—the father-son instruction and the concise saying. For more details, see the commentary.

It is generally agreed that The Words of the Wise (Prov. 22:17–24:22), drew upon the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope. The Commentary notes the Egyptian influences. Proverbs borrowed selectively and has put its own stamp on what it did borrow, recasting the material into the characteristic Hebrew bicolon, or two-line verse. Proverbs’ debt to the Egyptian instructions in chaps. 1–9 is less obvious. Its warning against the foreign woman (2:16–19; chap. 5; 6:20–35; chap. 7) is also found in the Instruction of Any (Eighteenth Dynasty, ca. 1550–1305 B.C.E.).

Taken as a whole, the instructions in Proverbs 1–9 are distinctive in two ways. First, they are less specific than their Egyptian and Mesopotamian prototypes. They urge readers to seek wisdom rather than to do or not do particular actions. To put it another way, Proverbs emphasizes character rather than acts. Second, the strong personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 1, 8, and 9 and its vivid descriptions of Wisdom’s two enemies—deceptive men (1:8–19; 2:13–15; 4:10–19) and the deceptive woman (2:16–19; chap. 5; 6:20–35; chap. 7; 9:13–18)—creates a metaphorical level of discourse that was unknown in earlier wisdom literature. Personified Wisdom asserts her trustworthiness, benefits, and closeness to God, and seeks receptive disciples and companions. Other voices, however, invite the youth into contrary relationships—men (always plural), a woman (always singular). The son in chaps. 1–9 is invited to choose a life companion. The search for a suitable wife (or properly relating to the wife one has) and founding (or maintaining) a house—characteristic tasks of young manhood—become metaphors for acquiring wisdom and virtue and rejecting their opposites.

The metaphorical use of seeking