[This continues our series from A Literary Guide to the Bible, a MUST READ book if you are interested in this approach to reading the Hebrew Bible specifically, though the book is based on the Christian Bible, Old and New Testaments. Please be reminded that Sinai 6000 does not regard the Wisdom Books as ‘Divine Revelation’, since our position is — only the Torah, the first five books attributed to Moses is what we consider as ‘divinely sourced’. All other books outside of theTorah are writings of men as inspired by the Elohiym of Israel, YHWH. We do not build theologies out of these wisdom books although we figure, since they made it into the canon of Hebrew Scripture, that there is nothing in their teaching that goes against YHWH’s Torah. Still, they are man-sourced and should be regarded as such. Reformatted and highlighted for this post.]
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes – James G. Williams
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are the two chief works of the ancient Israelite Wisdom tradition. The Book of Job is usually included among the Wisdom writings, and occasionally the Song of Songs. In addition to these works, we find Wisdom compositions among the psalms (for example, Ps. 1 and 119), as well as proverbs and folk sayings scattered throughout various books of the Old Testament. In the Apocrypha, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) and Wisdom of Solomon are important expressions of ancient Jewish Wisdom.
Wisdom as a Way of Looking at the World
Different as these works are from one another, they all presuppose a way of looking at the world that was characteristic of ancient Israelite Wisdom literature and, to a great extent, of all ancient Near Eastern Wisdom literature.
This Wisdom perspective was quite different from that of the grand narratives of the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets, which told of—
- the beginnings of the worldrelated the establishment of cultic institutions,
- and of Israel,
- and included many tales of founding figures, prophets, and kings.
Wisdom is dedicated to articulating a sense of order. The world is viewed as an order informed by a principle of retributive justice. As one turns to the world and gives to it, so one receives from it. The world is virtually retributive in the sense of the Latin retribuare, “to pay, grant, repay.”
In Proverbs this principle is stated on one line, which unfortunately reads in translation as a stuffy moralistic maxim:
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing:
but righteousness delivereth from death. (10:2)
The clever play on consonants does not come through in English. “Treasures of wickedness” translates a Hebrew phrase constructed of sibilants which are interrupted only by the r sound: ‘otsrot resha’. Wickedness is immediately contrasted with righteousness, and the contrast is strengthened with two sibilant combinations and a concluding sibilant: utsedaqah tatsil mimawet, “and righteousness delivereth from death.” A sound-meaning relation is thus created between “treasures” and the “righteousness” that “delivereth from death.”
The principle of retribution is given a more dramatic form in this proverb about overweening pride:
Those haughty of heart are loathed by YHWH;
A matter sealed! They shall not be acquitted. (16:5 [At])
The second half of this proverb represents a future certainty through a dramatic image. “A matter sealed”—literally, “hand to hand”—is an expression evidently derived from the practice of striking hands as a sign of sealing a bargain (also 11:21; see 6:1, 11:15). What is “struck” or sealed is the guilt of those who are overbearing, which suggests a judgment scene.
Of course, the fact that the world is a marvelous order does not mean that human thoughts, schemes, and words are really under human control. From a human point of view the world is ultimately a maze:
A man’s heart deviseth his way:
but the Lord directeth his steps. (16:9)
(See also 16:1, 19:21, 20:24, 21:30-31, 26:27.) But in spite of the fact that the human mind cannot finally fathom the way of the world and the way of God, the Wisdom tradition tends toward confidence in the dependability and bounty of the world.
This dependable world is revealed and sustained in the proper appreciation and use of language. It is through speaking that relationships are established and the world is opened up. This is put most vividly in Proverbs 18:21:
Death and life are in the power of the tongue:
and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Language gives human beings the capacity to create ideas and symbols that constitutes a human world. But this capacity is simultaneously the ability to bring about evil situations and harm others. Words can both damage and heal:
A soft answer turneth away wrath:
but grievous words stir up anger. (15:1)
In the mouth of the fool, the proverb, the chief form of wise language, is useless:
Legs dangling from the lame
and a proverb in the mouth of fools. (26:7 [AT])
The theme of language is so pervasive in the Wisdom tradition that it is central in sexual ethics, dominating the characterization of the “stranger woman,” the seductress who lures the man trying to steer his way through life’s hazards. It is her coaxing, flattering speech that holds the power of entrapment (2:16, 5:3, 6:24). She symbolizes the most destructive kind of folly. Her seductive, and ultimately destructive, use of language leads to utter disorder, as we see in the allegory of Dame Folly (9:13-18).
In order to be wise, to understand the principle of retributive justice and the necessity of wise utterance, one must heed the “fathers,” who are first of all one’s parents, and by extension all of those who have the role of elder in the present and past generations:
My son, hear the instruction of thy father,
and forsake not the teaching [AR] of thy mother. (1:8)
This traditional attitude is stated by Bildad in Job:
For inquire, I beg you, of a former generation
and ponder what their fathers have searched out,
for we are but of yesterday and do not know,
for our days are a shadow on the earth. (Job 8:8-9 [AR])
Everything in traditional Wisdom, from its basic ideas to its literary forms, affirms order. What this means when the principle of retribution, the necessity of wise utterance, and the authority of the fathers are brought to bear on the individual is the imperative of discipline and self-control.
Wisdom has no systematic view of the human itself, but the individual is seen as a complex order held in check and guided by wisdom.
- The wise person will be cautious and moderate (Sirach 18:27, 30),
- will plan ahead and not be lazy (Prov. 10:5),
- and is able to take orders from a superior (Prov. 10:8).
One of the most interesting indications of this emphasis on discipline and self-control is the way in which words denoting temperature become metaphors of restraint and undesirable license.
And angry man [man of heat] stirs up strife:
but the patient person settles disputes. (15:18 [AT])
He that hath knowledge spareth his words:
and a man of understanding guardeth his temper
[is cold of spirit]. (17:27)
To summarize,
- Wisdom as a way of looking at the world depicts a vital order informed by retributive justice and given human expression in wise utterance.
- The sayings of the wise have been transmitted by the elders,Wisdom thus affirms a divine cosmic order and represents folly as disorder.
- who are to be held in respect,
- and this world-sustaining wisdom of the sages is maintained through individual and social discipline.
- It does not, however, impose a systematic view of order on the world and human behavior.
- Although human existence and the surrounding world are placed within the framework or order, individuals and situations are conceived of in their particularity and are not methodically organized into a system of abstractions.
This basic outlook, consistently espoused in the rather conservative wisdom of Proverbs and Sirach, and also incorporated in the Talmudic tractate Abot, is a way of seeing the world which most of the Wisdom texts of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia assume and advocate. But the ancient Israelite wisdom of order became inadequate for some thinkers and was transformed in their writings into a “wisdom of counterorder.”
This change occurred when the disorienting effects of three related conditions shook the tradition.
(1) Wisdom’s generalizations about typical individuals and situations seemed to be contradicted by individual experience and particular situations.
(2) The tradition consequently lost its power to inform feeling and thought and exert social control.
(3) The representing function of language was subverted by new questions issuing from a skeptical or paradoxical frame of mind in the late Old Testament period, from the Babylonian Exile (586 B.C.E.) into the Hellenistic period and Diaspora (from about 330B.C.E.). This new situation is reflected in the later phase of Wisdom literature.
The Book of Job gives expression to the most radical doubt concerning the sapiential tradition in this later phase. The Job poet draws upon the principle of retribution and attendant Wisdom themes, and his work is heavily stamped with traditional Wisdom poetics. But Job’s radical innovation is its challenging new view of divine justice and human suffering. In this central regard, the Job poet does not employ the literary forms of conventional Wisdom. The climax of Job is a revelation of YHWH which is presented within a narrative dialogue frame. The combination of narrative dialogue and divine speeches is characteristic of the Law and the Prophets, but not of the Wisdom literature of the ancient Near East.
Ecclesiastes, in contrast, both presupposes and attacks the conventional wisdom represented by Proverbs. Ecclesiastes’ style, outlook, and conclusions on the meaning of life radically question received wisdom. Ecclesiastes sees polarities in creation but subordinates them to a skeptical questioning of what the ancient sages taught. Its litany of the “right times,” for example (3:1-8)—the poetic enumeration of the right seasons to do and not to do certain things—reads as though it were straight out of the pages of the Wisdom of order. Yet the question with which the poet follows the enumeration shows that he perceives this sapiential teaching of the times as vain: “With profit has the worker in his toil?” (v. 9 [AT]). A sad irony emerges, for the obvious answer to the rhetorical question is “none,” as indicated both in the following verses (3:10-15) and in what he says earlier about profit (1:3; 2:11, 13). The world is not an arena of gain; there is no retribution that is satisfying.
The literary foundation of Wisdom poetry is the proverb, which we shall consider at length in the next section.
- The proverbs of traditional Wisdom and ritual have a similar function, in that both represent an ideal present which recurs constantly in accordance with a specific model of the world.
- Myth and proverb also operate similarly, both placing their respective subjects outside of time. One concrete expression of this relationship of myth, ritual, and the kind of proverb current in a folk tradition is a tendency people have to repeat a saying in order to identify with its truth, though the truth remains something for which they need not take responsibility.
The saying comes from the past and the authority of the tradition, so in repeating it one simply states “what is said.” Thus, when David says to Saul outside the cave at En-gedi, “Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked” (1 Sam. 24:13), he makes a point about his own good intentions by repeating ancient wisdom. His intention is to reestablish peace and equilibrium between himself and Saul, which is one of the primary uses of the Wisdom saying. The saying quoted is also a good example of the kind of principle that shows the common basis of Wisdom and law. In this instance, a person’s motives, which the community must trust in order to maintain stable social life, are to be inferred from what he actually does. Since the legal tradition has effect only from the starting point of observable behavior, it must be build up elaborate mechanisms to deal with possible lack of evidence and the nature of the suspect’s intentions (both handled, for example, in Exod. 22:7-13).
The part that proverbs and sayings play in righting social situations and supporting legal statutes is closely related to what has been uncovered in some modern theories of the self; these theories offer certain insights into the function of Wisdom.
- Henri Bergson argued in his essay Laughter that laughter acts primarily to correct a social situation riddled with tension.
- Sigmund Freud, in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, also stressed the tension-relieving work of wit, analyzing it in terms of his theory of the unconscious and the pleasure principle. The lifting of constraints is an act of disorder,whether momentary or sustained.
Social constraints will give license to engage in approved forms of momentary disorder, such as jokes in certain tacitly agreed-on settings. But if disorder is sustained, it must be placed within a new frame of reference, a “counter-order” that calls into question the dominant tradition. One such counter-order point of view is set forth in Ecclesiastes, which is directed against the Wisdom tradition presented in Proverbs.
[Continued in Wisdom Books – 2, Proverbs]