INTERPRETING OLD TESTAMENT WISDOM LITERATURE

The Chapter at a Glance

Introduction to Old Testament Wisdom

Wisdom's Perspective and Worldview

Wisdom Literature and the Rest of the Old Testament: A Complementary Relationship

Wisdom's Goal and the Pedagogy of the Sages

• Wisdom's Genres: Poetry and Proverb

• The Nature of Poetry

• The Nature of a Proverb

• The Authority of a Proverb

INTRODUCTION TO OLD TESTAMENT WISDOM

The old Testament wisdom books are Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. They are so designated because wisdom is a prominent theme in this literature, and they are characterized by a common methodology and epistemology. They are inspired and authoritative in the same sense as the rest of Scripture but are characterized by differences in perspective and worldview which must be taken into account for correctly interpreting and teaching this material.

Wisdom in the Old Testament regularly involved the ability to do something or accomplish a desired objective as opposed to the accumulation of information or theory formation. The terms [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "wise" and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "wisdom" are used to describe the skilled craftsmen who took Moses' plans and constructed the Tabernacle and the furnishings associated with it. Sailors who could successfully reach their destination despite the dangers of ocean travel are described in Ezekiel 27:8 as "wise." Psalm 107 describes a storm so intense that the sailors' skill/ wisdom "was swallowed up" (v. 27), and they survived only because of God's gracious intervention. The term is used of military strategists and political leaders (Isa. 10:13) and ofwomen skilled in lamenting for the dead (Jer. 9:17).

Israel recognized the presence of wisdom in other cultures such as Egypt (Isa. 19:11–13), Phoenicia (Ezek. 28; Zech. 9:2), Persia (Esth. 1:13; 6:13), and Babylon (Dan. 2:12–13; 5:7). Sometimes the wisdom associated with other nations was viewed negatively because of their pride, or because the wisdom was associated with divination and magic, but generally their wisdom was recognized as legitimate. First Kings 4:29–34 compares Solomon's wisdom with the wisdom of the "sons of the East" and Egypt. Ancient readers would have been impressed that Solomon's wisdom surpassed that of people renowned for their wisdom.

There are similarities in form and content between the wisdom literature of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel. Themes such as the problem of inexplicable suffering or traits that contribute to success or failure are dealt with in each culture's wisdom literature. Similar forms such as proverbs, acrostics, and riddles are also found. Similar proverbs existed in Mesopotamia and Egypt as early as 2600 B.C., and some may even have been borrowed by the biblical authors.

WISDOM'S PERSPECTIVE AND WORLDVIEW

Several biblical passages state that wisdom is a gift from God, but when the content of some biblical and extrabiblical wisdom literature (certain proverbs, lor example) is examined, it appears that some of this material comes from God in what appears to us to be a secondary sense. Many proverbs articulate principles that can be identified by any insightful person who carefully observes the world, and Israel and her neighbors recognized many ofthe same principles as contributing to a person's success. It does not require direct revelation from God (what theologians call "special revelation") to realize how diligence contributes to success or the problems that a bad temper can cause for a person.

This kind of wisdom comes from God in the same sense as is affirmed in Isaiah 28:23–29. There the farmer's knowledge of how to plant and cultivate his crops is said to come from God. Such skill and understanding, however, does not normally come as the result of special revelation: rather, the farmer carefully observes and calculates; he tries various techniques in order to improve his agricultural production. His own experience with planting and harvesting supplements and refines traditions that have been passed down by past generations. A similar process is described in Proverbs 24:30-34, where a person walking down the road observed the overgrown and unproductive field of the sluggard. This person reflected on what he saw and made the connection between the sluggard's behavior and the outcome. He received instruction (v. 32) from the experience and presumably went on his way determined to avoid the behavior that produced such unfortunate results for the sluggard.

This kind of knowledge is possible for anyone who carefully observes the world because God has designed order and regularity into it. Wisdom presupposes the existence of "an all-embracing cosmic order ... which served as the cohesive force holding together the various components of created order in a well-integrated, harmonious whole." Israel recognized that this order was created and maintained by Yahweh, and it is this order that provides the basis for systematic and repeatable observations about the world.

The order that is part of God's design constitutes an essential aspect Of wisdom. Crenshaw points out that "God has embedded truth within all of reality. The human responsibility is to search for that insight and thus learn to live in harmony with the cosmos ... [and] being wise meant a search for and maintenance of order."

This wisdom is practical in nature rather than philosophical or academic, and as Estes has pointed out, "In the thought of Proverbs, wisdom is skill in living according to Yahweh's order. Folly is choosing to live contrary to the order he embedded in the universe." People can discover many of the principles by which the natural world operates; they are able to identify attitudes and behaviors that contribute to people's success and others that detract from it. This appears to be the way many of the principles in biblical wisdom literature had their origin, and this probably accounts for the parallels in content between biblical wisdom and that of other nations.

The wisdom literature reflects a somewhat different perspective from other biblical literature. It rarely touches on theological themes such as covenant or God's choice of Israel or the Exodus, though Waltke has demonstrated the theological consistency between the wisdom literature and other biblical material. Wisdom literature reflects the human struggle to understand how things work in the world that God created, and the search generally proceeds without special revelation. The struggle for answers takes place the way we normally experience life in the world.

Living according to the principles God designed into the world can help a person and...