Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs for Everyone

John Goldingay

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781611645316
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Westminster John Knox Press is pleased to present the seventeen-volume Old Testament for Everyone series. Internationally respected Old Testament scholar John Goldingay addresses Scripture from Genesis to Malachi in such a way that even the most challenging passages are explained simply and concisely. The series is perfect for daily devotions, group study, or personal visits with the Bible.

In this volume, Goldingay explores three books of the Old Testament in the wisdom literature genre. These three books are all associated with Solomon and his wisdom, yet unlike other books, they do not mention the Torah, the exodus, or the covenant. As Goldingay says, "The basis of their teaching is the way life actually works. They look at life and reflect on experience and encourage people to live on the basis of how life works." Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs for Everyone explores three practical, down to earth, and hopeful books.

Chapter 1. Proverbs 1:1–19

Chapter 1. Wisdom’s Dictionary

¹ Sayings of Solomon son of David, king of Israel,

² for knowing wisdom and discipline,

for understanding words that express understanding,

³ for getting the discipline to act sensibly,

faithfulness, the exercise of authority, and uprightness,

⁴ for giving judiciousness to the naive,

knowledge and discretion to the young person,

⁵ so that the wise person may listen and increase in his grasp,

the discerning may acquire skill,

⁶ for understanding a saying and a parable,

the words of the wise and their puzzles.

⁷ The first principle of knowledge is awe for Yahweh;

stupid people despise wisdom and discipline.

⁸ Listen to your father’s discipline, son,

don’t abandon your mother’s teaching,

⁹ because they are a graceful garland for your head,

a chain for your neck.

¹⁰ If offenders entice you, son, don’t be willing,

¹¹ if they say “Go with us.

Let’s lie in wait for blood,

let’s ambush an innocent person, for nothing.

¹² Let’s swallow them alive, like Sheol—

whole, like people going down to the Pit.

¹³ We’ll find every sort of valuable wealth,

we’ll fill our houses with plunder.

¹⁴ Cast your lot in the midst of us;

there will be one purse for us all.”

¹⁵ Don’t go on the road with them, son;

keep your foot from their path.

¹⁶ Because their feet run to evil,

they hurry to shed blood.

¹⁷ Because it is for nothing that a net is spread

in the sight of any winged creature.

¹⁸ But those people lie in wait for their own blood,

they ambush their own lives.

¹⁹ Such are the ways of everyone who gets wrongful gain;

it takes the life of its owner.

I turned onto the freeway near our house, built up speed down the ramp, noticed as I reached the main lanes that there was a gap in the traffic but that a bunch of cars was on its way, so I built up speed to 80 or so to get ahead of them. Unfortunately they included a highway patrolman who pointed his radar gun at me. On went his lights and his siren. When we had stopped, he asked me, “Sir, do you know what the speed limit is on this road?” I said yes; I knew it was 65. But if we had been in Israel and we had been speaking Hebrew, I might have been less sure how to answer, because in biblical Hebrew, at least, the verb for “know” often denotes not merely knowing something in your head but knowing something in your actions. To know the law or to know God implies not merely knowing what the law says or knowing God in a personal way but acknowledging the law or acknowledging God by one’s behavior—submitting to and obeying what one knows.

The opening paragraph of Proverbs thus comes to a climax by declaring that the first principle of knowledge is awe for Yahweh, whereas stupid people despise wisdom and discipline; the opening chapter of Proverbs refers to knowing or knowledge six times. But the knowing isn’t expressed merely in achieving a high IQ or a high score in the Standardized Admissions Test (SAT). The point runs through the opening paragraph, which introduces many of Proverbs’ key words. The connection between what goes on in the head and what goes on in the life immediately appears in the link between wisdom and discipline. Increasing in wisdom is tied up with increasing in discipline. It’s linked with the idea of “getting” discipline or “getting” wisdom—the word is the Hebrew verb that means to take. Getting hold of wisdom involves action. We speak of “grasping” things, and the word for “grasp” here is related to the word for “getting.” Grasping is an activity. In substance, gaining wisdom is related to understanding words that express understanding—the Hebrew word for understanding is related to the word for “between,” so it hints at the capacity to distinguish between things or to see behind the surface of things.

The Hebrew word for judiciousness is often translated “shrewdness”; it’s the capacity attributed to the snake in Genesis 2. It suggests being able to get people to do what you want them to do. It can have a bad connotation or a good connotation. Similarly “discretion” suggests skill in thinking things through and formulating plans, which in other contexts can be evil plans. That ambiguity points toward the significance of some other motifs in this opening paragraph. Alongside the references to wisdom and knowledge comes a sudden reference to faithfulness, the exercise of authority, and uprightness. The first two expressions appear frequently in the Prophets and also in the Torah; they are usually translated something like justice and righteousness, but they denote something more like faithfulness in making decisions. Appearing here, they imply that knowledge, judiciousness, and discretion need to be in the service of these moral qualities.

Together, the references to these moral qualities and to awe for Yahweh make a double point. It can be tempting to treat questions about economics, business, education, counseling, or foreign policy as issues in their own right that should not be mixed up with questions about religion or ethics. In particular cultural contexts (such as that of the United States with its separation of church and state), people such as Jews and Christians may have no alternative to living with that assumption in some areas of life. But we need to see how unnatural and unbiblical it is to consider policy questions, ethics, and God as separate spheres. Proverbs begins by urging its readers to let them interweave. Christians and Jews cannot adopt from the world theories or practices of business or counseling or education without setting them in the context of what we know about ethics and about God. Proverbs thus models how to go about learning from the secular world: we are open to such learning, but we set the secular world’s theories and findings into a framework that includes God and ethics.

Maybe that fact links with the further promise that Proverbs’ teaching is designed to help people understand parables and puzzles. Parables are straightforward-sounding stories whose real meaning is rather enigmatic; puzzles are the mysterious topics that the wise seek to understand, such as the nature of creation and the problem of evil. We’ll never understand everything about such topics, but we’ll gain more understanding if we take ethics and God into account.

The subsequent paragraph of teaching on a specific topic offers a corre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Old Testament for Everyone
• Titlepage
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Proverbs 1:1–19
• 2. Proverbs 1:20–2:22
• 3. Proverbs 3:1–35
• 4. Proverbs 4:1–27
• 5. Proverbs 5:1–23
• 6. Proverbs 6:1–34
• 7. Proverbs 7:1–27
• 8. Proverbs 8:1–36
• 9. Proverbs 9:1–18
• 10. Proverbs 10:1–32
• 11. Proverbs 11:1–31
• 12. Proverbs 12:1–28
• 13. Proverbs 13:1–25
• 14. Proverbs 14:1–35
• 15. Proverbs 15:1–33
• 16. Proverbs 16:1–33
• 17. Proverbs 17:1–28
• 18. Proverbs 18:1–24
• 19. Proverbs 19:1–29
• 20. Proverbs 20:1–30
• 21. Proverbs 21:1–31
• 22. Proverbs 22:1–16
• 23. Proverbs 22:17–23:21
• 24. Proverbs 23:22–24:22
• 25. Proverbs 24:23–25:22
• 26. Proverbs 25:23–26:28
• 27. Proverbs 27:1–27
• 28. Proverbs 28:1–28
• 29. Proverbs 29:1–27
• 30. Proverbs 30:1–14
• 31. Proverbs 30:15–33
• 32. Proverbs 31:1–9
• 33. Proverbs 31:10–31
• 34. Proverbs by Topics
• 35. Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
• 36. Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:11
• 37. Ecclesiastes 2:12–26
• 38. Ecclesiastes 3:1–15
• 39. Ecclesiastes 3:16–4:3
• 40. Ecclesiastes 4:4–16
• 41. Ecclesiastes 5:1–7
• 42. Ecclesiastes 5:8–6:9
• 43. Ecclesiastes 6:10–7:22
• 44. Ecclesiastes 7:23–8:15
• 45. Ecclesiastes 8:16–9:12
• 46. Ecclesiastes 9:13–10:20
• 47. Ecclesiastes 11:1–12:7
• 48. Ecclesiastes 12:8–14
• 49. Song of Songs 1:1–17
• 50. Song of Songs 2:1–17
• 51. Song of Songs 3:1–11
• 52. Song of Songs 4:1–5:1
• 53. Song of Songs 5:2–6:10
• 54. Song of Songs 6:11–7:13
• 55. Song of Songs 8:1–14
• Glossary