What I'd like to do now is just finish discussing the basic content and not so much structure, but the content of the book of Proverbs because we haven't finished talking about some of those additional sections, and some of them have some of the best Proverbs in the whole book. Some of my favorites come toward the end of the book. Now so far in our dealing with the book of Proverbs, we dealt with the first nine chapters, and then we dealt also with the beginning dealing with the Solomonic collection, which runs from chapter 10, verse 1 to 22, 16. So as you're all looking around for your outlines, I'll let you find those. It should be the outline you had before, okay? Not the outline you got tonight on Job. I went ahead and gave that to you in advance, just in case we got there. But if you look for your Proverbs outline, and I want to say one final comment about this central Solomonic collection, remember last time we were talking about this, I mentioned that, curiously, this collection of Proverbs from chapter 10, verse 1 to 22, 16, Proverbs of Solomon, has a total of 375 individual Proverbs. And what did we speculate might be the significance of that number? The numeric value of Solomon's name, and again, we don't do that kind of thing. It sounds a little wacky to us, but again, this was a different time, a different culture, and much of what we do might seem quite wacky to them, okay? So before we leave that section, now let me tell you something that Ray Van Leuven says in his essay on the Proverbs, and that's in this book, a complete literary guide to the Bible. I hesitate, you know, to hold Bible books up before the camera, but this is one that I think will stand the test of time and will be useful for a good long time. So if you're looking for another book to buy for your library, this would not be a bad one. In fact, it would be quite a good one because it approaches the biblical books, both old and new testament, in terms of their overall literary structure, and the literary, well, how's the best way to put it? Rather than approaching them, you know, kind of in a verse by verse fashion, it says, what's the big picture? What can I learn from this entire book? And so Ray Van Leuven, who's done quite a bit of work on Proverbs, he wrote a doctoral dissertation, I believe, on the book of Proverbs and such, in his very brief essay here, points out something that I think's interesting for us to see, and I'm going to write this on the board just to let you see how the logic of the book does flow quite nicely. He says, chapters 1 to 9, in these chapters, we have the opposition of wisdom versus folly. And if you remember back to those chapters, you know that you have the appeal of wisdom made to the simple, in a neutral sense, and the appeal of folly made to the simple. And the reader and the young person being addressed is presented with a choice. There's a wise path to follow, there's a foolish path to follow. He goes on to say that in, as we come to the central Salamonic collection, chapters 10 to 15, which have that large proportion of antithetical Proverbs, just to give you a quick example, we looked at chapter 10 last time, but it goes on and on for most of those chapters, you have the first line, an evil man is trapped by his sinful talk, but a righteous man escapes trouble. This is what happens to the evil, but this is what happens to the righteous. This is true of the righteous, but this is true of the evil. So in these chapters 10 to 15, we have the opposition of the righteous versus the wicked, or as opposed to the wicked. And then he says interestingly that in chapters 16 to the end of this collection, which is 22 and verse 16, we have what he calls an advanced course, including acceptable exceptions, okay? Advanced course in wisdom. So this is sort of like, this is wisdom 101, and this is wisdom 201, or we could make it even more upper level than that. He explains it this way. He says the literary sequence of sections A and B, this is A, and B, and that's in the Salomonic collection, the literary sequence in sections A and B, thus seems to embody a form of developmental pedagogy, developmental teaching, young persons need first to learn the basic rules of life, time enough later to learn its painful mysterious absurdities. Because in language, so in life, we first learn basic rules and patterns, the exceptions come later. And then he gives an example, which is a nice homie example. On returning from the country, my city-reared toddler excitedly told his mom, we see the cow. He had mastered the ED ending, the normal regular past tense ending, but not the irregular verb. So he'd gotten the basics, but the exceptions still eluded this young toddler. And his suggestion is that we see that kind of development in the book of Proverbs. Thus it's not surprising that as we get farther along, then we do get more of the difficult cases, the exceptional cases where the complexity of life is considered more. Okay. Well enough said on that, we move now to the next section that follows this, Proverbs 22, Proverbs 17 to 24, 22, which I have on your outline simply entitled, Sayings of the Wise. Sayings of the Wise. Now, this is a very interesting section, you may want to open your Bibles to it, 22, 17 is where it starts. And let me just read the first four verses of this new section. Pay attention and listen to the Sayings of the Wise. Apply your heart to what I teach, for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips, so that your trust may be in the Lord I teach you today, even you. I've stressed that before, so that your trust may be in the Lord. I teach you today, even you. Have I not written 30 Sayings for you, Sayings of Council and Knowledge, teaching you true and reliable words so that you can give sound answers to him who sent you? Have I not written, verse 20, have I not written 30 Sayings? Does anyone have a different translation that doesn't say 30 Sayings? What does King James say? To be excellent things in Council and Knowledge. Okay, excellent things, and that's possible from the Hebrew, is that what you have as well? Okay. All right, several have that. Those are the two basic options. It is likely that 30 Sayings is correct, and we learn this from, believe it or not, comparative literature. We have from Egypt the instruction of Amenemope. Shall I spell that? I can't even say that. Amenemope. Actually, I don't need to spell it because I can refer you to it in your reading in Matthews in Benjamin. If you look, if you were to look, and if you haven't looked yet, you should look. Beginning on page 189, it has the teachings of Amenemope. Amenemope. Okay. Well, what's interesting about this is this is an Egyptian book of wisdom that contains 30 Sayings. And that suggests to us, again, a kind of a standard form, that just as we, you know, we have 12-step methods. Why 12? You know, have you ever heard of a 11-step method? You know, it's the form, it sounds better. And even if it would only take 11-steps to cure you, you know, they're going to make it a 12-step method because that's the accepted form. Okay. Well, this is a book of 30 Sayings. Again, interestingly, there are many similarities between what we read in the Egyptian instruction of Amenemope and the biblical text. However, don't let that confuse you. Don't let, don't, don't, don't believe for a minute that that means that they are identical or that we should reduce the biblical text somehow to the level of the Egyptian document. Though there are many parallels and many, many of the proverbs are somewhat similar, there are also distinct differences. The chief difference, of course, is that the biblical proverbs have a yawistic tenor. That is, they focus on the Lord, on Yahweh, sometimes called, sometimes mispronounce that word Jehovah, okay, the covenant god of Israel. There is a, there is, we noted already in verse 19 that the collection begins with the reference to the Lord so that your trust may be in the Lord, I teach you today, even you. It also ends or near the end in 24 verse 21. We have another reference to the Lord. Fear the Lord and the king, my son, and do not join with the rebellious. And then just about in the middle of the collection, in 23 17, we have yet another reference to the Lord. Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. And so four aft and in the middle is this emphasis on the fear of the Lord. And that, for starters, distinguishes it, of course, from the Egyptian instruction. But also let's look at one specific example. Proverbs 22, 22 has a parallel. Let me read, first of all, the Egyptian proverb. It's found on page 191 in Matthews and Benjamin. And it reads simply this way. This is, again, their translation of the sort of their paraphrase, sort of a living Bible translation of the Egyptian instruction. It says simply, do not steal from the poor nor cheat the cripple. And then they go on to another proverb, do not abuse the elderly nor refuse to let the aged speak. Now, let's look at Proverbs 22 and we'll see that it's quite similar in some ways. Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court. Not exactly the same, but same general sentiment. But notice how the book of Proverbs goes on, verse 23, for the Lord will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them. See how theological motivation for right behavior is given there. And so we see that that alone, if nothing else, distinguishes this collection of 30 sayings from the Egyptian counterpart.
Now, how should we view comparative material? Well, you've been reading, I hope you haven't forgotten entirely to read this. I do make assignments in it occasionally and we'll continue to do so. This is more just for background knowledge to let you know that the Bible was not the only book around at the time of its writing. But there were extensive literatures that can serve to help us understand sometimes the form, the shape, the genre of the biblical literature. But what should be our attitude toward comparative literature? And what is our attitude? Let me put it this way and make it easier to answer. What can we learn from comparative religions? Yes? Okay, we can learn how distinct Christianity is distinct in what sense? In a very basic sense, what would we say? It's true. Well, that's actually the answer I was looking for. You know, we view Christianity, we understand it to be, and we believe that God has given us eyes of faith that we see rightly that Christianity is a true religion, is the true religion, and all other religions are false. Does that mean that we can't learn something about the nature of religion? So you hadn't come to a knowledge of Christ or even been exposed to the Christian religion? Could you not learn something about the shape of religion from looking at other religious fades? You know, that there's a belief in a supreme being or more than one, that there's a notion of prayer. There's a notion of accountability to the supreme being. You know, those kinds of things, we could learn some things from them. And by the same token, we can learn something about the form, the shape, the expected structure of what we may find in scripture from comparative literature. It may open our eyes to something, but the way I like to sort of summarize it so that the comparative method or comparative literature does not become imperative literature, and then mandate what the Bible is. I like to compare it to, you know, wax fruit and real fruit. If you've never seen an apple, you could learn a great deal about an apple by looking at a wax apple, but it will not nourish you. In fact, to consume it might kill you, depending on what it was made of. Okay, so that's the way I view comparative literature. So be careful not to allow your knowledge or your reading of comparative literature to begin to think, well, the Bible is just like everything else. No, it's not. You know, just as there's a true religion and many false religions, this is God's word and many others may teach, may have something of a similar form that are not the same. Okay, well, that's a topic of its own. And so I need to move on because there's a lot I want to talk about yet. Moving to the next section, I want to get particularly to 25 to 29 where some of the favorite proverbs are. The next section is a very short one that begins in chapter 24 verse 23 where it simply says these also are sayings of the wise. Well, why didn't, if these are also sayings of the wise, like the preceding section, why weren't they simply lumped in with the preceding section? Well, because that would have messed up the 12-step method. You know, it would have messed up the book of 30 sayings. So as standard, have the book of 30. And here's some others we just can't resist including. Now, I'm going to just highlight one or two things from time to time. But one that strikes me in here in this section is the first little couplet of proverbs that comes right off the bat. These also are sayings of the wise to show partiality in judging is not good. Whoever says to the guilty, your innocent peoples will curse him and nations to announce him, but it will go well with those who convict the guilty and rich blessing will come upon them. I think we can learn something from that in terms of our own system of justice, our own sense of justice in society. I know that often our temptation is to think the worst possible thing that could possibly happen would be that an innocent person could be wrongly charged and wrongly convicted. Well, the Bible tends to hold things in tension and says, whoever says to the guilty, you are innocent. People will curse him and nations to announce him, but it will be well with those who convict the guilty and rich blessing will come upon them. Now, there are other proverbs that talk about the protection of the innocent, but it's saying the right path is a narrow path. And that's true of so many things. If we back so far away from a potential abuse, back so far away, then we fall off the other side and we're into the opposite of abuse. And I think in a sense, maybe our justice system is, it's out of whack to some extent. And I'm not a judicial person, so I don't know a whole lot about it, so I'm not going to continue to talk about it and pronounce it. But it does seem that something is a skew in terms of speedy and right justice and God cares both that the innocent be vindicated and that the guilty be convicted. Moving on to 25 to 29, this is one of my favorite sections here. These are more proverbs of Solomon copied by the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah. Remember, I think I mentioned this to you before in terms of this as clear evidence that this book of the Bible at least was not written in one sitting by one individual. And actually it's true of many books in the Old Testament, more so in the Old Testament than in the New Testament necessarily, but it does seem clear that this book at least began its life and then was augmented at a later time, some 200 years after Solomon by the men of Hezekiah under his, probably under his direction. This is Solomonic material, according to the text that they had available to them and they thought it's time that this Solomonic material find its place in that largely Solomonic book, the Book of Proverbs. And maybe Solomon had limited himself to 375 sentence sayings in keeping with his numeric value and they said still and all we want this appendix. And so they bring together this Solomonic material and it does, you notice a bit of a systematizing tendency. As you read that, did you notice, hey, if you're making marginal notations of the topic of each proverb, suddenly you begin to see, hey, I'm writing the same thing over and over again, little groupings together. For instance, if you move on to chapter 26, I have, oh, a number of verses that we were looking at before, full, full, full, full, full, full, full, full, full, full, full, full, okay? Right on down the line, many verses dealing with the fool and then in verse 13 it moves into talking about the sluggards, sluggards, sluggards, sluggards, sluggards, sluggards, as my margin. 26, 18 to 22, again a grouping there, gossip, gossip, gossip, gossip. That's a good one for all of us to think about. And then 26, 23 to 28, deceitful lips, deceitful lips and so I have lips, lips, lips, lips, lips, lips, okay? Or tongue, tongue, tongue, tongue, tongue, sometimes I put that in the margin. Also, this collection I think contains some of the best proverbs, some of the ones that strike me as being really brilliant proverbs. Let me just choose a few examples and we can think about them briefly and maybe discuss them briefly. What do you make of 27.5? Chapter 27 verse 5, better is open rebuke than hidden love. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Can you think of a life situation in which that would be a good proverb to espouse? Steve? Right, right, okay. Yeah, I'm forgetting to repeat these for the film, I'm sorry about that. But we've had several examples of, you know, in familial situations or in a church situation where the idea is, if I can kind of extrapolate and summarize, there are situations when a rebuke may be the loving thing and hidden love, you know, let's say an absenteeism, you can say, you know, we all know many parents who really, really love their children but don't deal with them. And that hidden love, which they feel in their hearts, doesn't really surface in any meaningful way, in a corrective way or in any way to that child that does the child some good. And so it may be it's sort of a credo for being a little proactive in our relationships. Now, again, is that, is there every, you know, again, we recognize the nature of a proverb, it's situation specific. You know, if I were berating my children and using angry tones and going on and on and on, and my wife were to say to me, we used to have these little signals where she didn't want to say something directly that she has coached. You know, should say, boy, it's getting dark in here, is there a light out somewhere? You know, we, have you ever had these? It's good. It's a little secret code. And that means you're getting a little heavy here, you know, you're turning this too much. You know, if she were to say that to me in the middle of my tirade, and I were to say, well, better is open rebuke than hidden love and then continue on. Well, that would be a misappocation of that proverb. Okay. But if, if on the other hand, she were to say, you know, you really need to talk to your son about that. And I would say, well, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to hurt him and she would say, well, you know, your, your love is not expressing itself properly. Better an open rebuke than hidden love that remains hidden in your heart and doesn't take feet and act as it, as it must. Another favorite, 27-21. I forget that one. That's the one we memorize. 28-5. Don't forget that one. You have to remember that one. 28-5. Have you ever seen this? Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully. Can you think of a life situation where you've seen that happen? I see a lot of knowing grins here. Okay. Well, the example of a criminal who knows what he's doing but is blaming it on the system, that certainly happens. I'm not, I'm not sure that's exactly what this one saying, because saying evil men do not understand justice. I guess the most telling examples I've seen are, sometimes when, when you have highly educated, highly trained lawyers that appear on television and defense of, in defense of some subject and they make, and they make this kind of transfer, you know, like saying, I find it astonishing that some people are anti-abortion, using the term they use, and yet are not anti-capital punishment. You know, how can that be? You know, that's nonsensical. We'll see now that, that a person who fears the Lord understands that fully, because God both commands the protection of the innocent. And also commands that crime be dealt with in an appropriate way. And capital punishment is a part of the Old Testament and the law of God and God's instruction. So there's a place for it. I probably shouldn't get on these touchy subjects in this classroom. But I've seen those, those examples on television when I think, how can that guy have all that education? And he's sitting there unembarassed making that statement and it's ridiculous. And our children even see through it. Okay, so because our minds are clouded by our own sin and our own wickedness at times. Another of my favorites is 29.25, which was the other memory verse that I didn't, that I overlooked today, 29.25. Fear of man will prove a snare, but whoever trusts the Lord is kept safe. Fear of man will prove a snare, but whoever trusts the Lord is kept safe. Where would you apply that? Where do we need to know that? As you're entering, let's say, as you graduate from here or as you go back to your workplace or as you go to your home, how would this proverb apply? Yes, Cedric hasn't had a chance tonight. Right, interesting. He's talking about the example of being at the workplace, the tendency is to want to play up to the boss, curry favor with the boss. You're worried about what the boss thinks. In other words, you're fearing man. And that will prove a snare. In many ways, the boss may see through that. I want somebody with a head on his shoulder, somebody with some integrity, somebody with some sense, but the man who fears the Lord is kept safe. Even in the domestic sphere, if you go home and you're afraid of your spouse, afraid of your spouse, you may not be the instrument of God's grace in that individual's life for fear of that individual. Rather fear the Lord and know that the Lord will help you weather the storm and keep you safe and speak the truth in love. Be a partner to that person. Don't be a silent partner. Be a partner that speaks in love. Better, open, rebuke than hidden love in that sense. This is just scampering across the top of a very deep iceberg and I wish we could spend more time on it. Anyone else have a favorite before we move on? And we do need to move on. Okay, good. Well, let me just say a few more words then about the latter two sections. In chapter 30, we have the words of augur. We don't know who augur was. There are some mystifying theories about what this name may mean. I will not get into them because they are mystifying to me. It is not terribly helpful in terms of understanding. One example, again, the sayings themselves are sort of mystifying. These are, there's a preponderance of what we call numeric sayings. You know, four of this, yay five, three, yay four, six things, the Lord hates, they're seven that are testable to him as we read in Proverbs six. Well, this has a whole lot of that stuff. And one of them that's kind of interesting is Proverbs 30 beginning in verse 18. There are three things that are too amazing for me. Four that I do not understand. The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, the way and the way of a man with a maiden. And then it's interesting that it goes on and says, this is the way of an adulteress. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I've done nothing wrong. And Derek Kidner, in his commentary on the book of Proverbs, ties that one in and says, you know, that's a jarring fifth thing. That's difficult to understand. As you can imagine, there are many theories as to, what is that set of Proverbs? To see it, once the eagle has sailed by, or once the snake has slithered over the rock, or once the ship has sailed, it's hard to follow that path. It's hard to retrace it. I'm not particularly convinced by that one. Derek Kidner says that rather, what is amazing is that ease, the ease of mastery, he says, of these four things, of these elements as difficult to negotiate as air, rock, sea, and the young woman. The way in which these, I don't know how best to put that, but the way in which these events take place, amaze the wise teacher. We could have a discussion group on that, but I don't think we will. But then the fifth, he says, is the jarring fifth, the adulteress woman who is utterly at ease with sin. Now, moving on, I said I'd move quickly, and we've got to have our breaks. Proverbs 31, the last section, again, has its own heading, the sayings of King Lemuel and Oracle, his mother taught him. And this is, again, all of these sections have their own points of interest, but what I particularly like about this one is the way as it continues, and whether the epilogue is from King Lemuel or not, this wife of noble character, it's interesting that the book begins with wisdom personified in feminine form, lady wisdom, making her appeal to passers-by. That they come to her rather than to the house of Madame Folly. What began with wisdom personified as a woman ends with this focus on the wife of noble character. And, again, I think that's because in the first instance, in this school setting, I think it was the father and the mother, he mentions the mother's instruction, instructing the son. You know, listen my son to your father's instruction. Now, again, it all applies to women, we just need, and to daughters, we just need to recognize it when the book is talking about the adulterous woman that there is the counterpart, the adulterous man, but not explicitly addressed. So since it's sons that are being addressed in the first instance in this original setting, then it's appropriate that wisdom be personified as a woman, inviting the son to come to her, and then this focus on the wife of noble character at the end nicely finishes off that book. Now, as perhaps as a bit of reassurance, it is worth noting that this description of the wife of noble character is an alphabetic acrostic, which means that it's ABCD, the A to Z of the character of a noble woman. So none of you here tonight need necessarily tack this on your bulletin board as my job description. It's not a bad idea for both men and women to read this description and say, these are noble virtues, and if you're a woman to think I would like to see these virtues in my own life, if you're a man to say I appreciate when I see these virtues in a woman's life. In fact, to share a personal story, when I actually proposed to my wife, I used these words right at the end. Many women do noble things, but you surpassed them all. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Now, she was not insulted. Some women would be saying, what do you mean charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but she knew the emphasis that I was putting there. Men should look for women who meet at least that criterion without necessarily thrusting them into all these different activities, because this is the A to Z. They don't expect any one superwoman to be doing all of this all the time. By the way, this woman doesn't sound like she gets any sleep. Did you notice that? We can identify with that. But again, a wonderful book. I feel like we've only been able to touch the surface of it, but we need to stop and take our break. Let's take a ten minute break, and when we return, if you'll return promptly and come back to your groups, we can get started right away. Let me go ahead and give the instructions right now. If you'll keep taping here just a second. What I want us to do when we come back is get in your groups, share your outlines, give yourself maybe five minutes or so to look over each other's outlines. Then I want you to start working together, hammer out a composite outline for your whole group, and you may discuss things and say, I don't see that. I don't think you can say, I think you're misinterpreting that verse, but it's not just put it all together to make it as big as possible, but make it as well thought through and as accurate and as helpful as possible. Part of what we do in a class like this in all of life is learn to work together happily and helpfully with other people. I know it's late, I know you'll be tired, but try to master some energy and do a good job at this. When we come back, we'll get right to those groups. I will be watching, so I'll give you ten minutes. When it comes back, seven after, try to be back in your group.