1. Ordinary Wisdom: Proverbs 1-9

2. From ancient times, people have wondered if these popular sayings really have a place in the Bible. They do not seem to derive from revelation, a direct word of God. Rather, they reflect, quite literally, “common sense,” the sense the faith community has made of its cumulative experience. If this is wisdom, then it is wisdom of the homeliest sort. But that is exactly the point.

3. The proverbs are spiritual guides for ordinary people, on an ordinary day, when water does not pour forth from rocks and angels do not come to lunch.
(Davis, Proverbs, Kindle )

4. “Proverbs is a book made up entirely of short poems, most of them only a few words long. In Hebrew, the sayings are generally about the length of a modern haiku.”
(Davis, Getting Involved With God, 92)

5. National Poetry Day was this week…
Remember 5 7 5?

6. Biblical proverbs/poems were drawn from a variety of sources:
Ancient Egyptian sayings
Popular wisdom collected largely during the period of the monarchy in Israel
Extended poems written/added to frame the pithy proverbs, likely during the period of the exile in Babylon (chapters 1-9, 30-31)
Written to be heard, and memorized. There is no plot, no narration, no topical organization!

7. “Memorize a single saying; you can do it while taking a shower, waiting at the bus stop, or chopping the vegetables for dinner. Let it sit in what (ancient sages) called “the casket of your belly” for a day or a week or more, returning to examine it from the different vantage points of varied experience. If you give the book of Proverbs that kind of time, then it will yield to you its wisdom. You will begin to sense the peculiar force with which the passages address the hearer who positions herself to listen well. (Davis, Proverbs, Kindle )

8. “Implicit, then, to a correct understanding of wisdom was the awareness of its limits. As effective as the proverbs were as a guide to success, they could be misleading if viewed as magical sayings which would always and automatically bring results.” (Hubbard, OT Survey, 558)

9. Proverbs 1:1-7 For knowing wisdom and discipline, for seeing into words of insight, for gaining discipline for success: righteousness and justice and equity. For giving to the naïve astuteness, to youth, knowledge and discretion. Let the wise hear and learn more, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and discipline, fools despise. (Ellen Davis trans.)

10. Wisdom and discipline are always linked for the Hebrew poet
Wisdom and discipline are always linked for the Hebrew poet. Knowing cannot be separated from doing.
“The Bible shows no interest whatsoever in abstract knowledge—that is knowledge that is … abstracted from the concrete problem of how we may live in kindness and fidelity with our neighbors, and live humbly and faithfully in the presence of God.”

11. “Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.” (Peterson, the Message, Intro to Proverbs)

12. The purpose of wisdom is success.
“But consider how they define success: the establishment of righteousness, justice and equity. The one who is wise aims at goodness, not power.” (Davis, Getting Involved, 95)
How remarkably different that is from how success is defined in almost any other context.
“I cannot recall the subject of righteousness ever coming up in any job interview in which I have participated!” (Davis, 95)

13. The opposite of wisdom is not ignorance, but foolishness.
“One of the stock characters in Proverbs is the fool.
A fool is someone who refuses correction or reproof because she cannot seriously entertain the possibility of being wrong.”
(Davis, 99)

14. The wise can be wrong. But they are committed to growing in astuteness, knowledge, and discretion, acquiring skill and understanding. “The one who hears reproof acquires a heart.” Proverbs 15:32