So if we read Proverbs’ various statements on a subject all together, we can see many larger points. In chapter 12 we are told that the path toward disaster can seem to be the right one to a fool, but in chapter 16, that the disastrous road can appear to be right to anyone. In other words, sometimes, even if you have done due diligence, your choices may still go wrong, because it is a broken world. The wise know that sometimes “all paths may run ill.” As we will see, there is an order God put into things when he created the world and by which we must abide. But on the other hand this is a fallen world, distorted by sin, and the wise know that the created order does not always work, nor is it always easy to discern.
Only all together do the proverbs bring us a wise, nuanced, theologically rich, many-faceted view of the world.
Proverbs as Pedagogy
Many have concluded that the book of Proverbs was originally a manual for the instruction of young men. The addressees are always “sons.” If that is the case, then it makes sense that we should have warnings against predatory, adulterous women in chapters 5 through 7 but no analogous warning about predatory, adulterous men.3 Modern readers sometimes chafe, therefore, at how male oriented the book is. We should not conclude from this, however, that Proverbs is more negative about female character than male, or that women should not be instructed in wisdom while men should be.
We have seen that the creation and dissemination of proverbs took a great deal of artistry and deep learning. Yet in Proverbs 1:8; 4:3; 10:1, and elsewhere it is both father and mother who are instructing their son. The mother was “an authoritative voice along with the father.”4 This surely means that daughters as well as sons must have been trained in the terse poetry and epigrammatic wisdom of proverbs. Indeed, the idealized wife of Proverbs 31:26 “speaks with wisdom” and “faithful instruction is on her tongue.” These are technical terms meaning she speaks at length with great solemnity and imparts the wisdom of the ages.5 So while the original readers of Proverbs were male, not female, the wisdom and training of this book nevertheless applies to everyone.
We should, however, never forget that Proverbs was written not for private reading but as a manual to be worked through in a community of learners, with older, wiser mentors. At the very least, then, we would like to urge you to use this daily devotional together with a group of friends. Here is a suggested way to do this.
Choose one or more friends and agree to use the devotional together, each reading the same reflection individually, in private, on the same day. At the end of each reflection there is a question that helps you think more personally about how the teaching applies to your life. Write the answer to the question in a journal. Then write answers to two additional questions about the day’s proverb(s) in your journal, unless your response to the first query has already included them.
Where in your life or the life of someone else have you seen this observation illustrated?
How can you put this observation into practice—in thought, attitude, word, or deed?
After completing your journal entry, pray the prayer at the end of each page. These short prayers are just “on ramps”—suggested ways to begin talking to God personally about what he is teaching you in his Word. Put the prayer in your own words if you wish, and then continue speaking to him about how the particular Scriptural teaching should play out in your life. This should be your daily routine—read, meditate using the journal questions, and pray.
Then meet with your friends who are doing the same daily exercise as often as you can. Share your best insights, discuss them together, encourage one another to apply the insights to your lives, and report to one another on how your efforts are going.
Proverbs as Part of the Whole Bible
While we call Proverbs a “book,” it really is one chapter in a much larger book—the Bible—which presents, through all its various parts and narratives, a single, coherent story. That story is that the human race has marred God’s good creation through sin and now needs salvation, and that this salvation has been accomplished and can be found only in Jesus Christ. Therefore, like every other part of the Bible, Proverbs will give up its fullest and richest meaning only when it is read in the light of the person and work of Jesus. Jesus dazzled his listeners with his wisdom (Luke 2:40,47; Mark 6:2). He claimed to be the new Solomon with the ultimate wisdom (Luke 11:31). The personified Wisdom that created the world (Proverbs 8:22–31) is finally revealed to be Jesus, the Word of God, with whom God created the world (John 1:1–4.) Paul calls Jesus the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30), the one in whom all God’s wisdom is hidden (Colossians 2:3).
Remember, too, that “the fear of the Lord” (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10) is the beginning of wisdom. A living, vital relationship with God is wisdom’s absolute prerequisite. This “fear,” as we will see, is not cringing terror but an attitude of awe and wonder before the faithful, covenant love of God. The New Testament shows us that the kind of relationship with the Lord that Proverbs calls for can be fully realized only through faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Themes of Proverbs
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the study of Proverbs is the task of synthesizing all that it says on a particular subject. In this devotional book, the first weeks of the year examine the general teaching on the subject of wisdom in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. After that, however, I have grouped the daily readings into sets of topics, enabling the reader to accumulate the various insights on a specific theme, piecing together the wisdom that the book offers on the subject. Readers should expect that some proverbs recur in more than one daily reading. The reason is that many proverbs do not speak strictly to one topic, but have implications for practice under several headings of wise living. The themes are listed below.
Knowing wisdom: January 1–February 7
What is wisdom?
What is foolishness?
How do we become wise?
The case for wisdom
Knowing God: February 8–March 23
The fear of the Lord
God’s order perceived
God’s order disrupted (Ecclesiastes)
God’s order hidden (Job)
Knowing the heart: March 24–June 12
Understanding the heart
Reordering desires
Understanding temptation
Understanding emotion
The Seven Deadly Sins
Knowing others: June 13–August 10
Friendship
Words
Gossip
Listening
Conflicts
Knowing the times and seasons: August 11–September 3
Guidance, planning, and decision making
Insights for our age
Knowing the spheres: September 4–December 14
Marriage
Sex
Parenting
Money and work
Power
Justice
Knowing Jesus, the true wisdom of God: December 15–December 31
In each day’s reflections, text references for Proverbs will be cited only by chapter and verse numbers. (So “10:13” rather than “Proverbs 10:13.”) Text references for every other book of the Bible will have chapter and verse numbers accompanied by the name of the book. (So “Psalm 37:29.”) Also, words and phrases taken from that day’s biblical text that are quoted in the body of the reflection will be in italics rather than within quotation marks.
KNOWING WISDOM
What Is Wisdom?
January 1
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel . . . for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise. (1:1,6)
WHAT IS A PROVERB? A proverb (Hebrew masal) is a poetic, terse, vivid, thought-provoking saying that conveys a world of truth in a few words. Modern people do not have a category for proverbs
. They are neither absolute commands nor promises, and often they are partial. That is, they need to be put beside other proverbs on the same subject to get the full picture. They are observations about how life works. The point of a proverb, then, is to get rightly related to reality through hard thinking and sustained reflection. A proverb is like hard candy: If you just bite down on it, you get little out of it and may even get a broken tooth. Instead you must meditate on it until the sweetness of insight comes.
Wisdom is not only for “deep thinkers.” It is how you get through daily life. It helps you know what to do when your child comes home from school with a black eye, or when you suddenly come into unexpected money, or when you lose your job. What do you do that won’t make things worse? Our wisdom will guide us as we grow in the knowledge and image of his Son, Jesus, who is Wisdom itself.
In what area of life do you most need to grow in wisdom?
Prayer: Lord, I’d prefer if you would simply tell me what to do through some inner voice or some book of specific rules for every situation. Instead I hear you calling me to grow into a wise person who discerns what to do. Help me to answer that call, and give me understanding. Amen.
January 2
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: for gaining wisdom. (1:1–2a)
NOT JUST MORAL. The main word for wisdom in Proverbs (Hebrew hokma) includes being moral but goes beyond that. It is making the right choice even when there are no clear moral laws telling you explicitly what to do. Some decisions require only knowledge (like the proper medicine to take) and some only compliance with rules (like whether to commit adultery or not). But no Bible verse will tell you exactly whom to marry, which job to take, whether to move or stay put. Yet a wrong decision can be disastrous. And there are no explicit moral laws against character flaws such as abrasiveness, impulsiveness, emotional fragility, and disorganization, yet they can also damage the course of your life.6
If God had given us a hundred-volume set of rules for every situation, we would have relied on the book and our diligence. But when we see what wisdom truly is, we will be driven to look to Jesus, of whom it was said, “What’s this wisdom that has been given him?” (Mark 6:2).
Have you ever seen an example of a good and moral person who was very unwise?
Prayer: Lord, I tend to be smug about my right beliefs. I love to think I know the truth, but even when I do, I don’t know how to use it. Please bring into my life what is necessary for wisdom to grow, and then remind me that I received it from you. Amen.
January 3
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: for gaining wisdom and instruction. (1:1–2a)
DISCIPLINE. Surrounding the Hebrew word hokma in these early verses of Proverbs are many near synonyms that shed much light on what wisdom is. The Hebrew musar (instruction in 1:2–3) means training with strong accountability. It means being drilled under an instructor who often gets up in your face. So wisdom often comes through the pain of personal confrontation by friends (27:5), or from learning from one’s mistakes (26:11), or from the suffering that God judiciously allows into our lives (3:11–12). Every time your car breaks down and you have to figure out how to fix it, you become “wiser” about cars. So it is with life. Proust wrote that wisdom can be discovered only “after a journey through the wilderness which no one can make for us, which no one can spare us.”7
To become wise is to become a disciplined person, given not to impulsiveness but to self-examination, to circumspection, and to clear thinking. It is to become a resilient person who through hard knocks has become poised and resourceful. As an athlete becomes physically competent only after rigorous training, so wisdom is hard won.
Can you see in your own life how God has used difficulty to make you wiser?
Prayer: Father, children need discipline even though they may rebel and resist when they receive it. An undisciplined child, however, will have a miserable life. Forgive me for not recognizing the hard knocks and disappointments of my life as your fatherly discipline. Let me learn wisdom from them all. Amen.
January 4
For gaining wisdom and instruction; for understanding words of insight. (1:2)
DISCERNMENT. Another aspect of wisdom is insight (Hebrew bina). This means the ability to notice distinctions and shades of difference where others see only a blur. Kathy can see small but significant differences between the performances of ballet dancers that Tim can’t perceive, and he can notice fine differences in the quality of a curveball that are lost on her. We are, as it were, wiser than each other in the fields of dance and sport.
Biblical wisdom, however, brings discernment to the skill of the daily living of life itself. To be wise is to recognize multiple options and possible courses of action where others can imagine only one or two. Wisdom discerns multiple dimensions to people’s motives and character, rather than putting everyone into the binary categories of “good people” and “bad people.” Discernment is also the ability to tell the difference not just between right and wrong but also among good, better, and best. Christians find that as Christ’s love in our hearts grows, so does “depth of insight” (Philippians 1:9). His love heals the self-absorbed ego and enables us to notice and be sensitive to others around us.
Where has God been enabling you to see fine distinctions that you didn’t see before?
Prayer: Lord, our world seems divided between the people who see everything as black or white and those who see everything as gray. Deliver me from both legalism and relativism—neither is wise. Give me the humility and discernment that is necessary for having a wise heart. Amen.
January 5
For receiving instruction in prudent behavior . . . for giving prudence to those who are simple, knowledge and discretion to the young. (1:3–4)
DISCRETION. The Hebrew words haskel (prudent behavior) ormah (prudence) and mezimma (discretion) all mean to plan and live strategically. Just as there are moral people who are not wise, so there are visionaries who see where we should go but have little idea of the practical steps for bringing the goal into reality. To be wise is to anticipate problems without falling into either the danger of overconfidence or the paralysis of overcaution. It is to know not only what to do but also when to do it. A blessing at the wrong time can have the effect of a curse (27:14). While discernment (January 4) is a form of insight into hearts, discretion is a form of foresight, knowing what kinds of behaviors will lead to what result (22:3).
Wisdom is, in one sense, knowing how to be “successful” at something. But it is wrong to mistake worldly sophistication for godly wisdom, as Adam and Eve did (Genesis 3:6). The ultimate wisdom was seen in Jesus, the suffering servant (Isaiah 52:13) whose success was absolute but not of a kind that the worldly sophisticates of his time could recognize.8
Remember a time when you had the discernment to know what to do but not the discretion to know how to accomplish it. What did you learn from that?
Prayer: Lord, I want to be successful, but for many wrong reasons. Do everything necessary—even bringing into my life humbling disappointments—that will teach me to care more about being faithful than about being successful. Only then will I be freed from the pride and fear that prevent true success. Amen.
January 6
Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance. (1:5)
LEARNING. As we can be moral and still be unwise, so it is possible to be very knowledgeable and yet be foolish. A social scientist may know much about the empirical factors that lead to poverty. Yet in actually trying to help a poor family, she might make their lives far worse. So there’s knowledge without wisdom. But can you have wisdom without knowledge? No. You have to be knowledgeable about a subject before you can apply it with the discipline, discernment, and discretion of wisdom. So Proverbs calls those who would be wise to add to their learning. The Hebrew word leqah means extensive study.
To be
wise we must understand human nature, how human relationships work, suffering and death, and the character of God himself. Wisdom is wedding thought and experience to become “competent with regard to the realities of life.”9 And among all other things we should study, true wisdom requires deep knowledge of the Scriptures. Even Jesus based his every move on the Bible, quoting Scripture to face and explain his death (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1). How can we be wise without being immersed in the Word of God?
How can you take steps to greatly increase your knowledge of the Bible? In what other areas of life should you be reading now?
Prayer: Lord, I spend far too little time studying and meditating on your Word, and I have no excuse. We always make time for the things we value most. So I ask your forgiveness for not loving your Word and you as you have loved me. Teach me your truth. Amen.
What Is Foolishness?
January 7
“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?” (1:22)
THE OPPOSITE OF WISDOM. Throughout the book of Proverbs the opposite of wisdom is called foolishness. In English the word “fool” is little more than an insult. In Proverbs, however, fools are people so habitually out of touch with reality that they make life miserable for themselves and all around them. We can’t treat our body any way we want without consequences. We can’t treat people any way we want and expect to have good friends and a strong family. We can’t all live selfish lives and expect the social fabric to remain intact. Fools, however, do all these things and therefore sow and reap discord and destruction.
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