The Value of Proverbs

Introduction

Automaker Henry Ford asked electrical genius Charlie Steinmetz to build the generators for his factory. One day the generators ground to a halt, and the repairmen couldn't find the problem.  So Ford called Steinmetz, who tinkered with the machines for a few hours and then threw the switch. The generators whirred to life--but Ford got a bill for $10,000 from Steinmetz.  Flabbergasted, the rather tightfisted car maker inquired why the bill was so high.

Steinmetz's reply: For tinkering with the generators, $10. For knowing where to tinker, $9,990. Ford paid the bill.

Hebrew words don’t always equal English words but look at 2 main ways wisdom is used in English.

Weak – prudence, good judgment. ‘Wise’ – it was wise to buy that car – no deep understanding of life is required.

Stronger – uses an array of qualities and powers – unusual trait of character or intellect. A quality of character – both the knowledge of right and the will to pursue it.

John Phillips

“The book of Proverbs then is not simply a collection of bits of human wisdom. It contains God's rules."

GIVES THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF RIGHT BEHAVIOR

vv. 1-3.

To Gather the Right Knowledge

v. 2a

To know (in learning) – to possess knowledge / learn it

by an active relationship between the believer and wisdom,

Wisdom

** Wisdom –all-purpose word; from technical skills to the ability to see the real issues of life. One who can make decisions and manage people wisely.

always positive.

Vine, “Hokmah [wisdom] is the knowledge and the ability to make the right choices at the opportune time. The consistency of making the right choice is an indication of maturity and development.”

Spurgeon - Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

** Expertise, the man who is an expert or wise man. The word most often used in proverbs.

** A high degree of knowledge or skill. Combines broad faculty (reason, discernment, cleverness) with knowledge (communicable information, known and learned). Gaining knowledge increases intelligence here.

** Nearest English is expertise. Being an expert in right living and character!

** Areas of expertise include: a) Craftsmanship/skill; b) Knowledge through the study of written materials – learning; c) Understanding the implication of situations, interpret signs and texts; d) Skill in devising strategies and plans – cunning; e) Good judgment; f) Knowledge of right living.

Wisdom (hokmah) – the message of the instruction, the teachings themselves.

“It is better to get wisdom than gold. Gold is another's, wisdom is our own; gold is for the body and time, wisdom for the soul and eternity. - Matthew Henry

Instruction

3:11

Instruction – the idea of discipline; correction, instruction, doctrine.

Kidner, “a reminder that wisdom is not to be had through extramural [outer] study: it is for disciples only.”

Chastisement, punishment, correction, discipline, self-control – a bond, restraint; correction which results in education. 3:11. Is. 53:5

Vine, “how to live correctly in the fear of the Lord, so that the wise man leans his lesson before temptation and testing” 24:32. Training for life.

** Discipline, correction, education.

The teaching of the avoidance of faults or lesson to correct a fault to bring about moral character.

** Given by a superior to an inferior who is morally obligated to listen and learn – implies correction and discipline.

** Punishment in 22:15 and 23:13. A verbal lesson that gives chastisement; a verbal reprimand, warning.

** Wisdom is best learned at home – the Bible says that we are to be simple concerning that which is evil – but we should be wise in the Scriptures – teach your children the Bible and they will have all they need.

To Develop a Proper Understanding

v. 2b

Understanding – ability to discern between right and wrong – moral nature of wisdom

Discern, make a distinction.

I Kings 3:9

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?

Insight, prudence, intelligence; skill. Not on our own. 3:5.

An understanding resulting from comparative study

Binah (998), mebin (995) – understanding in v. 2.

So discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. The discerning person is the one who draws a clear contrast between truth and error.

Discernment is black-and-white thinking—the conscious refusal to color every issue in shades of gray. No one can be truly discerning without developing skill in separating divine truth from error

Ortlund explains

You know how a client would walk into Holmes’s apartment at 221B Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes could take one look and know nineteen things about him, and it was always “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Dr. Watson saw the same person, but not with the same insight. This word “insight” means that the non-obvious can become obvious to you. The immature might not see what you see. They might even misunderstand you. This happens often between parents and children. But, parents, it is your role to be the Sherlock Holmes of your family. Don’t surrender that to your kids. They don’t have enough insight yet. They need yours.

** So many people today just accept what they’re told, they don’t have any insight.

To Receive the Instruction of Wisdom

v. 3.

To receive the instruction of wisdom – take it to heart, absorb it and change one’s ways

means to take, grasp, acquire something worth having…This implies we must be ready, willing and able (enabled by the Spirit), to grasp God's Word

Wisdom – insight – genuine understanding – to look upon; perception of God’s will, wise, learned.

** Justice – right behavior in word and deed

** Judgment – right and just condition – society obliged to perform in a right state of affairs – favorable verdict

** Equity – straight, level - honesty, fair dealings.

Wisdom – sakal – 7919 – wise dealings; circumspect and prudent; knowing the reason for something.

** Discretion, good sense

** Regard (3:4); insight; the ability to grasp the meanings or implications of a situation or message; the ability to understand practical matters and interpersonal relations and make beneficial decisions.

** Gives patience 19:11; avoids social conflict – involves prudence and self-control.

GIVES THE ABILITY TO MAKE WISE DECISIONS

vv. 4-6.

Equipping the Young Man

v. 4.

Subtilty – ormah – 6195 – life-skills; planning, scheming; the wise will know their way around, see what’s ahead. ** The talent to devise and use adroit and wily tactics in attaining one’s goals. Used of guile or scheming.

** Wisdom lauds it in 8:5,12

Discretion – m’zimmah – 4209 – related to subtilty – neutral – clever and skillful in planning

** Shrewdness, circumspection.

** Hidden, private thinking; planning; scheming – neutral. God’s thoughts are this way too. Jer. 23:20

Simple – unformed gullible youth who are capable of gaining wisdom but until they do, they share some of the fool’s traits and are susceptible to sin.

- Ormah and mezimmah both refer to the ability to devise clever, even wily, tactics for attaining goals – morally neutral. Private plans for personal benefit.

- But Proverbs uses these as virtues – one commenter calls it an audacious move. Proverbs assigns all effective mental power to the realm of wisdom.

- Proverbs is the place to turn if you want prestigious skills of cunning and shrewdness – must be applied to worthy ends.

- This wisdom will protect him from the temptations of wicked men/women – he will be able to look inward, maintain independence of purposes and resist their inveiglements.

- These often come with maturity and experience.

- But how is the simple/young man to get experience without the pain and dangers it entails? Perry, “What wisdom proposes on faith to the inexperienced is rather a substitute experience, with the knowledge-value of real experience but packaged quicker, easier, and especially safer.” Effectively transmitted knowledge belongs to the essence of education.

- The young man – young people – early adulthood – even in marriage – old enough to choose friends, be sexually seduced.

** Subtilty for preventing of dangers is best learned out of the Scriptures.

** We are naturally simple, and easily led into error.

** Most danger of going astray is in the time of youth.

‘Over the gates of Plato’s school, it was written—“Let no one who is not a geometrician enter." But very different is the inscription over these doors of Solomon—"Let the ignorant, simple, foolish, young enter."—Cartwright in loc.—Lavater in c. Pr 4:20-22.).

Enhancing the Wise Man

v. 5.

- A wise man will hear – pay attention

Learning – leqach – 3948 – hearing; learning is something we are to receive. Wisdom calls! Hear the instruction of fathers/mothers. Ears must remain open to receive good counsel.

o Increase learning – an exhortation; here we see verbalized teaching – a message is communicated.

o Learning – is something the wise man already possesses but hopes to increase – enhance his skills in teaching. 16:21. Fluent and persuasive.

Charles Bridges - For a truly wise man is not a person who has attained everything, but one who knows that he has not attained and is pressing on to perfection

- Wise counsels – guidance, strategy; skill that directs actions – the act of giving advice and direction (sophisticated). The wise can acquired good counsel by studying Proverbs – used to direct self or others.

Wise counsels – tahbulot – 8458 – direction/guidance – root means a rope (securing a sail). ‘Knows the ropes’ – knows how to follow God’s guidance.

Tahbulot (8458) – wise counsels in v. 5.

** Strategy, guidance.

** Navigational skills – making one’s way through life, knowing the ropes; knowing the design or plan.

Nulla dies sine linea - J R Miller - The wise man never ceases to be a learner. He never gets to a point where he feels satisfied with his attainments. Many a man, who starts out with great promise in early life, by and by loses his energy and fails of his early hope, because in the elation of his first successes he stopped learning, and then growth was at an end, and when growth stops decay begins. An old artist had for his motto: "Nulla dies sine linea" (No day without a line). Every day he would add one line, at least, to his knowledge and attainment. There could be no better motto for any life, young or old. Every day we should learn something we did not know before, add some new fact to our store of knowledge. Every day we should get some new lesson into our life, learn at some point to live better.  This applies to secular life - there should be daily progress in the business or profession we pursue. It also needs to apply to spiritual life - no day should be without its added line of likeness to Christ

Mastering These Skills

v. 6.

Proverb – mashal – a wise saying. A simple comparison.

Dark sayings – chiydah – 2420 – puzzle, riddle, parable; a difficult sentence. Enigma – needing inside information.

- Understand proverbs and interpretations – the learned man will master interpretive skills. Interpretations – polished sayings – allegory – a saying that puts things in different words.

- Words of the wise – wise – those who possess a skill for successful living.

- Dark sayings – enigma – difficult saying – a riddle – challenges one to solve it. 30:15. Some are difficult while other enigmas are less puzzling (1:20; 8:1 sees wisdom personified and calls for a translation into abstract terms which are essentially quite clear). These are sayings that have immediate obscurity – on the surface are strange and even irrational or counter to the author’s intent. These require deciphering. “An enigma deliberately blocks immediate understanding by ambiguities and obscurities before allowing the audience to push through to a deeper understanding.” Crenshaw.

- Proverbs holds a vast array of wisdom. All interpretations of enigmas/dark sayings must be in accord with the context of wisdom that Proverbs supplies.

Derek Kidner - So the secondary purpose of Proverbs (Ed: Especially these "dark sayings" or riddles) is to introduce the reader to a style of teaching that provokes his thought, getting under his skin by thrusts of wit, paradox, common sense and teasing symbolism, in preference to the preacher’s tactic of frontal assault.

So to the teachable listener (Ed: And I would add the one who obeys what he learns) the deep things of God will be revealed (1Cor 2:9-13).

Ortlund sums on the principle in Pr 1:6 - Picture it this way. As we come to the book of Proverbs, we are approaching a community of wisdom, a group of people standing around talking together, men and women, who are Yoda-smart. We beginners sidle up to this circle of amazing people. We see, there in the circle of “the wise,” Solomon and Isaiah and Paul and Augustine and Luther and other remarkable people we have known personally and admired. We start listening to the conversation going on inside that circle. We overhear words and concepts we do not understand at first, so we have to stick with it to catch on. But as we do, we begin to leave behind our shallow entertainment mindset with its effortless, pat answers that in fact have always failed us. As we listen to the wise, we grow. We, even we, become profound people too. The final reason for this, of course, is not us, and not even them. According to Pr 1:7-note, God is there. The wise are letting God be God to them.

WHERE DO I START?

v. 7

The First Piece to Know – the Fear of the Lord

** Beginning – principle, essence, chief part. The fear of the Lord is the first thing to know, and afterwards one may learn and know everything else - a temporal priority – with 9:10; 15:33

** The fear of the Lord is the prerequisite of wisdom. As humility precedes honor so the fear of the Lord…

** Reshith denotes the point in time or space at which something started, except when it specifies the point when time and space themselves were started

** In Pr 1:7, the beginning is what must come first, the prerequisite but it is also the chief or supreme principle.

The Progress in this Knowledge

Wisdom and fear of God are brought close but not equated. The fear of God is inherently a religious virtue; it is wisdom that has a question mark over it. The fear of God is the sphere within which wisdom is possible and can be realize, the precondition for both wisdom and ethical behavior.

Wiersbe - “The fear of the LORD” means reverence for God and respect for His Word, a willingness to listen and a promptness to obey

This fear is the root of that right living and wise conduct, that forethought, purity, temperance, uprightness, and obedience to God, which we may call vital knowledge; knowledge in the heart and life, as well as in the head. (Monday Club Sermons.)

*** Progress of this fear ****

Basic – emotion (24:21). At the very start, a God-fearing Child may simply worry that God will punish him for his misdeeds.

Advanced – the understanding of the fear of God (2:5); the pupil has progressed from unreflective fear to cognitive awareness – conscience – deep knowledge – points to the cognitive bases of conscience and suggests how fear and knowledge of God can parallel. Dermot says, “[The fear of God] is a form of conscience that calls for an intellectual adhesion to a principle, the divine order, the concept of goodness of life, and this is a guarantee of success…a state of mind, not an action; synonymous with knowledge.”

The fear of God motivates right behavior even when socially enforced sanctions do not exist or aren’t effective. See Gen. 20:11 – Abraham worried he might be killed b/c no fear of God. Also, God knew Abraham feared him in Gen. 22:12 when he had no legal obligation to sacrifice Isaac, and even though God didn’t give any threats.

The fear of God is a motive for kind and respectful actions that belong to morality rather than to law – honor the aged; don’t mistreat the handicapped. Fear of God works even when the fear of man is ineffective.

Wisdom deals with behavior that is not governed by law or is clandestine – adultery. Thus there is need for a motivation prior to and deeper than the promised retribution, and this is the fear of God.

"What the alphabet is to reading, notes to reading music, and numerals to mathematics, the fear of the LORD is to attaining the revealed knowledge of this book."47

CONCLUSION

Alexander the Great was a teenager when he began his conquest of the world.  He was in his twenties when he had reached that unbelievable goal: the great Greek, cultural empire of Alexander the Great.

And he was asked, “How did you conquer the world?”

And he replied, “By never wavering.”

And when, in a tragic page on history, he died, a youth to me, so very young, his generals gathered around him, and asked him, “Alexander, whose is the kingdom?”

And he replied, “It is for him who can take it.”  Leaving no heir, having no son, “It’s for him who can take it.”