Old Testament · Wisdom & Poetry
מִשְׁלֵי
Wisdom by the spoonful, the fear of the LORD, the fool, the sluggard, and the excellent wife.
Short sayings for living well, and the most misread book in the Bible. Proverbs are not promises; they are observations about how life usually goes, which is why the same collection can say answer a fool and do not answer a fool two verses apart. Read as guarantees they will eventually wound someone, which is precisely why Job and Ecclesiastes sit next to them in the canon as the necessary counterweight. The opening nine chapters are not proverbs at all but a father's sustained appeal to a son, with wisdom personified as a woman calling in the street. The closing poem about the capable wife is an acrostic, running through the alphabet, and is better read as a portrait of wisdom herself at work than as a job description.
If you remember one thing
These are observations about how life usually goes, not contracts. Read alongside Job and Ecclesiastes, which exist partly to say that the usual pattern does not always hold.
“The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom.”
Proverbs 9:10
Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child, and he will not depart from it. Proverbs are general truths rather than guarantees, and reading them as promises has caused real grief to faithful parents.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
David's son, who asked God for wisdom and received riches and fame besides. He built the great temple in Jerusalem and his reign was Israel's golden age of peace. But his seven hundred wives turned his heart to their gods, and for that idolatry God foretold the kingdom would be torn in two after him.
A quiz for Proverbs is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
