The Book of Proverbs and
Ancient Wisdom Literature
Bruce K. Waltke
The
comparison made in 1 Kings 4:29-34 between Solomon's
wisdom
and that of the ancient Near Eastern sages strongly implies
that
his proverbs were a part of an international, pan-oriental,
dom literature. During the past
century archaeologists have been
uncovering
texts from Solomon's pagan peers, and scholars have
beeen using them to
further the understanding of the Book of
Proverbs.
The purposes of this article are to examine the ways in
which
this ancient literature has advanced the understanding of
“the
proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of
NIV),
and to demonstrate how these texts help answer introductory
questions
(date; authorship; literary forms, structure, and arrange-
ment; textual
transmission; and history of the wisdom tradition)
and
how these texts help interpret the content of the book (the mean-
ing of wisdom, its theological
relevance, and the resolution of some
exegetical
problems).
DATE AND
AUTHORSHIP
Before the discovery and decipherment of
these extrabiblical
texts,
scholars who applied to the Old Testament a historico-critical
method
(which presupposed the evolutionary development of reli-
gion) concluded that
the biblical witnesses to Solomon's contribution
to
wisdom could not be taken at face value.1 Instead, they argued,
[1] These
biblical witnesses are 1 Kings
222 /
Bibliotheca Sacra - July-September 1979
the
postexilic Jewish community under Grecian influences must be
credited
for these literary achievements. Even as late as 1922,
Hoelscher still placed
the so-called older proverbial literature in
the
Persian period.2 But the many pagan sapiential
texts, found
around
the broad horizon of the
dated
to the time of Solomon and centuries before him, have called
their
presupposition into question and have refuted their skepticism
toward
the biblical witness.
Giovanni Pettinato,
in his preliminary report on the thousands
of
tablets unearthed in the royal archives at Tell-Mardikh
(
alerted
biblical scholars that some of those tablets contain collections
of
proverbs.3 The precise dating of the royal palace at
some
difficulties, for the artifactual evidence points to
a date between
2400
and 2250 B.C. while the paleography of the literary texts points
to
a period around 2450 B.C.4
Gordon has published two collections of
Sumerian proverbs
out
of the fifteen collections he pieced together from the hundreds
of
clay tablets dug up from the scribal quarters at
and
Ur.5 These two collections containing about 200 and 165
proverbs
respectively have a strikingly similar form to the Solomonic
collections
of 375 and 124 proverbs in Proverbs 10:1-22:16 and
25:1-29:27
respectively. Gordon dates both of these Sumerian
collections
to the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1700 B.C.).
Lambert has published bilingual
proverbial texts containing
both
Sumerian proverbs and their Akkadian translations.6 Six of
these
fragments, dating from the Middle Assyrian times and later,
overlap
or can be placed in relation to each other, and thus provide a considerable
part of one group of proverbs known as the Assyrian Collection. He also published an Akkadian translation from Middle Assyrian times of a
Sumerian original entitled The
Instructions of
2 Gustav Hoelscher, Geschichte
der israelitischen und judischen Religion
(Giessen: A. Topelmann, 1922), p. 148.
3 Giovanni
Pettinato, "The Royal Archives of TelI Mardikh-Ebla," Biblical
Archaeologist 39 (May 1976):
45.
4 Paolo
Matthiae, "
ogist 39 (September 1976): 94-113.
5
Ancient
Gordon
also noted that "it is quite reasonable to assume a considerably older
date
for the origin of at least a great number of the proverbs included
in them."
6 W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 3d ed. (
Press,
1975), pp. 92, 97, 222.
The
Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature / 223
Shuruppak as well as the
famous Akkadian work, The Counsels of
Wisdom, which he dates
to the Cassite period (1500-1200 B.C.).
Aramaic proverbs are given in a
collection known as the Words
of Ahiqar. Ahiqar was a sage in the
court of the Assyrian kings
Sennacherib
(704-681 B.C.) and Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.).7
Instructional literature from
admonitions
found in Proverbs 1:2-9:18 and
dated
from the
Period
and Hellenistic Rule. The following is a list of those texts
belonging
to the Egyptian instruction literature.8
The
The
Instruction for Ka-gem-ni
The
Instruction of Prince Hor-dedef
The
Instruction of Ptah-hotep
The First Intermediate Period (2160-2040
B.C.)
The Instruction for King Meri-ka-Re
The Middle Kingdom (2040-1558 B.C.)
The
Instruction of King Amen-em-het
The
Instruction of Sehetep-ib-Re
The
The
Instruction of Ani
The
Instruction of Amen-em-Ope9
The Late Dynastic Period and Hellenistic
Rule
The
Instruction of 'Onchsheshonqy (fifth or fourth
century B.C.)
The
Instruction of the Papyrus Insinger (304-30 B.C.)
In short, wisdom literature existed
around the
not
only before Solomon but even before the Hebrews appeared
in
history!
LITERARY FORMS
Like the wisdom sayings in the Book of
Proverbs, these texts
of
varying provenience are composed in poetic form, that is, they
are
cast in parallelisms. Herder praised this form as "thought rhyme"
7 James M. Lindenberger,
“The Armaic Proverbs of Ahiqar,” (Ph.D. diss.,
8 Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom and Cult (Missoula, MT: Scholars
Press, 1977),
pp. 28-61.
9 The date of the
Instruction of Amen-em-Ope is hotly disputed and deserves a separate study.
The issue is of some importance because this text most closely resembles the
Book of Proverbs. A date for this text shortly before the time of Solomon has
received new support through the discovery by Cerny
of a broken (yet unpublished) ostracon in the
224 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
and
von Rad aptly likened it to expressing truth
stereophonically.
For
example, the familiar antithetical parallelism of Solomon's
proverbs
finds its counterpart in this Sumerian proverb: "Of what
you
have found you do not speak; [only] of what you have lost do
you
speak."10 In his "rhetorical analysis" of Sumerian
proverbs,
Gordon
calls attention to antithetical, synonymous, climactic, and
more
complicated types of parallelism.
Most instructive here is the Instruction of Amen-em-Ope, pre-
served
in a
that
is, in lines that show the metrical scheme. Furthermore, the
lines
are grouped into chapters.
The Egyptians had the specific term sboyet
("instruction" or
"teaching")
for their literary genre11 that closely approximates the
precepts
and maxims collected in Proverbs 1:2-9:18 and
24:
34. On the other hand, the pithy Solomonic sentences
designated
"proverbs"
in 10: 1 and 25:1 resemble in the strictest sense the
apothegms,
adages, and bywords of the Sumerian collections.
But in contrast to the Solomonic collections, the Sumerian
collections
and the Assyrian Collections contain
coarse and vulgar
proverbs.
Here are some edited samples: "[A low] fellow/[An A]
morite speaks [to] his
wife, 'You be the man," [I] will be the
woman.'
"12 "A mother of eight [grown] young men who is [still
capable
of] bearing [more children] lies down [for copulation] pas-
sively [?] !"13
"A thing which has not occurred.. since time immemo-
rial: a young girl
broke wind in her husband's bosom."14 Such
proverbs
bear more kinship to the Arabic, Turkish, and other modem
Near
Eastern proverbs than to the known proverbs from the rest
of
the ancient Near East.
10 Gordon, Sumerian Proverbs, p. 47.
11 William Kelly
Simpson, ed., The Literature of
12
Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, p. 230.
Lambert comments:
"The
section apparently refers to transvestite practices, which are first known in
the ancient near East from their condemnation in Deuteronomy xxii.5. Later
references to these rites in
could
be supported on the assumption that these people were notorious for
this
perversion, as were the men of
women of
13 Gordon, Sumerian Proverbs, p. 273.
14
Lambert, Babylonian
Wisdom Literature, p. 260.
The
Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature / 225
LITERARY STRUCTURE AND ARRANGEMENT
The literary structure of the Egyptian sboyet genre
includes
three
elements: (a) a title - "the beginning of the instruction of
X
which he composed for his son Y"; (b) a prose or poetic intro-
duction - the setting
forth of the details of why the instruction is
given;
and (c) the contents - the linking together of admonitions
and
sayings in mutually independent sections of very diverse nature.
Aside from the omission of the first
section, this is precisely
the
structure exhibited in the "Thirty Sayings of the Wise" (Prov.
which
is followed by the diverse collection of admonitions in
Compare, for example, the first two
chapters of the Instruction
of Amen-em-Ope with Proverbs
Chapter 1
He
says:
Give
your ears, hear the sayings,
It profits to put them in your heart,
Woe to him who neglects them!
Let
them rest in the casket of your belly,
May they be bolted in your heart;
When
there rises a whirlwind of words,
They'll be a mooring post for your
tongue.
If
you make your life with these in your heart,
You will find it a success;
You
will find my words a storehouse for life,
Your being will prosper upon earth.
Chapter 2
Beware
of robbing a wretch,
Of
attacking a cripple....15
If
those who divided the Bible into its chapters had been aware of
these
literary forms and structures found in the pagan sapiential
texts,
they no doubt would have made a chapter break between
Proverbs
The literary structure of the Egyptian
"teaching" genre also
enables
one to detect better the structure undergirding the Book
of
Proverbs. After the prose introduction in 1: 1 and before the
collection
of sayings in 10:1-31:31, the editor included a collection
of
admonitions and econiums to wisdom, setting forth in
detail the
value
of the instruction (1:2-9:18).
15
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient
Egyptian Literature: A Book of
2 vols. (
226 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
The biblical student may find small
comfort in learning that
the
sages throughout the ancient Near East essentially arranged their
material
in the same baffling manner found in the Book of Proverbs.
Is
there any logic to the arrangement? Perhaps some help is found
in
the Sumerian collections which fall, with few exceptions, into
groupings
which have in common either the initial signs of each
individual
proverb or the subject matter of the proverbs in the group.
The
"key sign" may also occur in the second place or even further
on
in the proverb.16 Moreover, the "key signs" also alternate
occa-
sionally. Gemser also notes rudiments of similar groupings in the
Instructions of
'Onchsheshonqy.17
Possibly the proverbial sentences
and
the admonitions in the Book of Proverbs are connected in this
so-called
anthological style whereby sayings are strung together by
certain
catchwords as in the more obvious key king
in
Yahweh in 16:1-7,
which follows an alternating pattern in 16:7-11
(note
king in
It is also surprising to find lofty
precepts mixed with more
"trivial"
apothegms. Of course, this is a misconception based on
the
modern-day viewpoint of life. From the sages' perspective each
proverb
is an expression of "wisdom," which is, as will be seen, the
fixed
order of reality. Viewed from this perspective no sentence is
trivial,
as
But when a predestined order is
recognized in so many quasi-
permanent features of society...all
rules of conduct become
practical rules. There can be no
contrast between savoir-faire-
worldly wisdom - and ethical behavior.
Conceptions which we
distinguish as contrasts thus turn out
to be identical for the Egyptian;
statements of his, which have for us a
pragmatic ring, appear to be
transfused with religious reverence.18
Elsewhere
wisdom
literature.
Such an inconsequential arrangement
characterizes many books of
ancient "wisdom"; the books of
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are cases
in point. The absence of a systematic
arrangement is due to the
traditional character of the contents.
There is no need of a closely
knit argument; striking images, incisive
wording are all that is
required to give a fresh appeal to the
truth of familiar viewpoints.19
16 Gordon, Sumerian Proverbs, pp. 24, 156.
17 B. Gemser, "The Instructions of "Onchsheshonqy
and Biblical Wisdom
Literature,"
Supplement to Vetus
Testamentum,
vol.
7 (1960), p. 113.
18 Henri
19 Ibid., p. 61.
The Book of Proverbs and Ancient
Wisdom Literature / 227
TRANSMISSION OF
THE TEXT
First Kings 4: 29-31 suggests that the
sages and their writings
were
held in high esteem in Solomon's world. The texts confirm this
impression.
One hieratic papyrus put the value of wisdom literature
this
way: "Books of instructions became their [the learned scribes']
pyramids.
...Is there another one like Ptah-hotep and
Kaires?"20
A
wall of a New Kingdom tomb at
mummiform statues of
important officials. Among the viziers are
Imhotep and Kaires. Their inclusion is certainly partly to be ex-
plained on the basis of
their reputations as sages.
Not surprisingly, then, their works seem
to have enjoyed a
canonical
status. "Take no word away, add nothing thereto, and
put
not one thing in place of another," cautions Ptah-hotep
with
reference
to his own work. His mentality corresponds to the godly
Agur's admonition:
"Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield
to
those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words or He
will
rebuke you and prove you a liar" (Prov. 30:5-6). Meri-ka-Re
was
told, "Copy thy fathers, them that have gone before thee....
Behold,
their words endure in writing. Open [the book] and read,
and
copy the knowledge, so that the craftsman too may become a
wise
man [?]."
The conservative scribes by and large
followed these admoni-
tions. The
Amen-em-Ope which
corresponds to 24:1-25:9 in the complete
ment and the extract
copied on the tablet begins precisely at the
beginning
of a page in the complete papyrus.
The colophon to the Counsel of Wisdom reads, "Written accord-
ing to the prototype and
collated." Lambert commented on a bilingual
tablet
from Ashurbanipal's library, of which no duplicate or early
copy
has yet been found.
Either this tablet, or an antecedent
copy on which it is based, was
copied from a damaged original, and the
scribe very faithfully
reproduced this. When he wrote on one
line what was split between
two in his original, the dividing point
on the original was marked
with the pair of wedges used in
commentaries to separate words
quoted from the comments on them....Where
the original was
badly damaged, the scribe copied out
exactly what he saw, and
left blank spaces marked
"broken" where nothing remained.21
20
From Papyrus Chester Beatty IV, following the
translation of A. H.
Gardiner.
21
Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, p. 239.
228 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
But the evidence also shows that some
changes were made. The
comparison
between the late bilingual tablets with their old
ian unilingual Sumerian material is
proving to be a most helpful
lesson
in literary history. Gordon turned up thirty-four individual
proverbs
common to both the earlier unilingual material and the
later
bilingual texts. Lambert observed instances where no change
occuued. "What is
more significant is that whole groups of proverbs
in
the same sequence are carried over from the unilinguals
to the
late
bilinguals."22 But he also noted that one tablet of the late
period
has
a proverb not in the earlier collection. This shows that while
collections
were transmitted conservatively, yet choice proverbs
could
be added to the collection. In the same way, the editor of
the
Book of Proverbs felt free to bring together material from
diverse
sources. Lambert also found another tablet which added a
variant
from one in the earlier period. The circulation of variant
forms
of the same proverb is also well known in the Hebrew collec-
tion (cf. Prov. 11:4
with 24:6 ).
HISTORY OF
WISDOM TRADITION
Many attempts have been made to trace in
one way or another
an
evolutionary development in the history of the wisdom tradition.
Richter,23
for example, advanced the notion that the motive clauses
in
the admonitions were late, post exilic additions to the imperative
statements.24
But more recently Kayatz carefully documented the
remarkable
parallelism between the syntactic forms of these admoni-
tions in both the Egyptian
and Hebrew instructions.25 Albright had
earlier
shown their close affinities with Ugaritic and
Phoenician
texts
and on this basis had argued for their antiquity.26
Hermisson27 and Murphy28
have proved wrong the thesis of
22 Ibid.,
p. 223.
23 W.
Richter, Recht und Ethos. Versuch einer Ortung des weisheitlichen
Mahnspruches (Munich: Kosel-Verlag GmbH & Co., 1966).
24 Compare
the imperative statements in the odd-numbered verses and the
motive
clause in the even-numbered verses in 3:1-12.
25 Christa Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1-9 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirch-
ener Verlag, 1966).
26 W. F. Albright,
"Some Canaanite-Phoenician Sources of Hebrew Wisdom,"
Supplement to Vetus Testamentum, vol.
3 (1955), p. 4.
27 H.
J. Hermisson, Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit (Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968).
28 Roland
E. Murphy, "Form Criticism and Wisdom Literature," Catholic
Biblical
Quarterly
31 (1969): 477.
The Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature /
229
Schmid29
that popular sayings (Volkspriiche)
developed into artistic
sayings
or aphorisms (Kunstspriiche).
Many today still attempt to date profane
and secular wisdom
with
the early period and the more religious and ethical wisdom with
a
later period. According to this view Israelite Yahwism,
with its
strong
religious stamp, was laid over an older pragmatic wisdom
inherited
from
thesis
recently propounded by McKane30 and Whybray.31
It would seem that we have here material
(from texts from the third
millennium extending to the late
dynastic times) for a history of
ideas, and modern scholars have
sometimes used these texts to
describe a development of social and
ethical thought in
not think that such an interpretation is
tenable if we study the
evidence without prejudice - that is,
without an evolutionary bias.
The differences between the earlier and
the later texts seem largely
to have been caused by accidents of
preservation, while their re-
semblance consists, on the contrary, in
a significant uniformity
of tenor.32
Erman concurs:
"It ['Onchsheshonqy] is far removed from the
pious
quietism
of the Instruction of Amenemope
and in fact seems closer
to
some of the
and
Kegemni…. "33
Whedbee addressed
himself directly to McKane's view.
McKane does not deal
with the basic concept of an order in the
world, which seems to have formed a
crucially important presup-
position in the wise man's approach to
reality. The wise man took
this order - created and guaranteed by
God - as the starting point
in his attempt to master life. ...To say
that the wise man was
completely an independent, empirical
operator, as McKane does,
is to misread the data of the ancient
wisdom and view it through
the lens of a modern construct. The wise
man always reckoned
with God….34
29
H. H. Schmid, Wesen und Geschichte der Weisheit (
Topelmann, 1966).
30
William McKane, Proverbs: A
New Approach (
minster Press, 1970).
31
R. N. Whybray, Wisdom in
Proverbs (
son, 1965).
32
constant
spiritual and moral stance throughout the history of the sapiential
genre (Altaegyptische Lebensweisheit [Zurich: Artemis-Verlag, 1955]).
33 Simpson, The Literature of Egypt, p. xxi.
34 J. William Whedbee, Isaiah and
Wisdom (
1971),
pp. 118-19.
230 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
Murphy
holds the same opinion. "No distinction of 'profane' or
'sacred'
is applicable here; God was considered the guardian of the
social
order...."35
Hubbard
concludes that no evolution in the history of the
wisdom
tradition can be discerned. "Simple evolutionary approaches
ought
to be passe
in studies of wisdom as they are in those of
prophecy
or cultus."36
THE SETTING
For whom were the proverbial sentences
and admonishing
sayings
originally composed? How should one interpret the frequently
recurring
expression, "my son"? For lack of space the theories given
in
answer to these questions cannot be discussed here. But it is this
author's
conviction that the wisdom material had its original setting
in
the home of the courtier.
At least that seems to have been the
case for the Egyptian
teachings.
As noted earlier, the titles of these works uniformly follow
the
form: "The instruction of X ...for his son Y." As
observed,
"The authors of the 'teachings' do not present themselves
as
priests and prophets. They appear as aged officials at the end
of
active and successful careers, desirous to let their children profit
by
their experience."37 Here, for example, are the introductions
to
Ptah-hotep and Ka-gem-ni, respectively:
The Instruction of the Mayor and Vizier Ptah-hotep ...: "O
Sovereign, my lord: Oldness has come;
old age has descended....
Let a command be issued to this servant
to make a staff of old age
(that is, the son as the support of his
father), that my son may be
made to stand in my place. Then may I
speak to him the words of
them that listen and the ideas of the
ancestors...."38
The vizier had his children called after
he had completed (his
treatise) on the ways of mankind and on
their character as en-
countered by him. And he said unto them:
"All that is in this
book hear it…."39
35 R. E. Murphy,
"Assumptions and Problems in Old Testament Research,"
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 29 (1967): 103.
36 David
A. Hubbard, "The Wisdom Movement and
Faith," The Tyndale Bulletin 17 (1966): 18.
37
38 James B.
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts
Relating to the Old
Testament (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 12.
39 Simpson,
The Literature of
The
Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature / 231
Amen-em-Ope, a high official in the administration of royal
estates,
wrote expressly for his own son, Hor-em-maa-kheru, a
young
priestly
scribe. Erman points out that the content of these
texts
supports
this alleged setting: "What King Amenemhet
committed
to
his son far exceeds the bounds of school philosophy, and there
is
nothing whatever to do with schools in the great man warning
his
children to be loyal to the king."40
The expression "my son" also
appears to have its face value
in
the Akkadian Counsel
of Wisdom. Lambert makes the following
comment
on the use of the term in this text:
The advice given in the section "My
son" can have had relevance
for very few people.... This suggests
that we are to construe the
text as being in the form of admonitions
of some worthy to his
son who will succeed him as vizier to
the ruler.41
Ahiqar, the vizier to
the Assyrian king Sennacherib, wrote his
words
for his nephew Nadin.42 He too uses the recurrent parental
address,
"my son."
Thus across many cultures through
centuries of history these
admonitions
are those of a high court official addressing his son.
The admonitions and proverbs in the
biblical text also appear
to
have originated in courtiers' homes. In addition to Solomon's
proverbs,
other literary achievements collected in the Book of
Proverbs
are attributed to King Lemuel’s mother (31:1) and to
the
copying
of Solomon's proverbs by the men of Hezekiah (25:1).
Moreover, the subject matter of Proverbs
best suits this setting.
Some
of them are most appropriate for kings and for those associated
with
him, e.g., proverbs pertaining to the nation (
king
(
way
worthy of a king (31:4); etc. Here too it should be noted that
court
wisdom in
as
guarantor of justice.43 In addition, the Book of Proverbs, like the
Egyptian
literature, includes a mingling of urban and agricultural
concerns,
particularly those of the wealthy plantation owner.44 Such
40 Ibid., p. 54.
41 Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, p. 96.
42 The
story is set during the reign of Esarhaddon.
43 H.
Brunner, "Gerechtigkeit als
Fundament des Throns," Vetus Testa-
mentum 8 (1958):
426-28; cf. H. Schmid, Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung
(1968).
44 R.
Gordis, "The Social Background of Wisdom
Literature," Hebrew
232 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
a
breadth of interest and perspective on life admirably suits the
position
of courtiers.
But these kings and high officials in
sons.
There is no reason not to take the reference to "my son" in
any
other way than in its normal significance. Elsewhere in the Old
Testament
the father is held responsible for his child's social, moral,
and
religious training (Gen. 18:19; Exod.
Furthermore,
it is certain that skills and trades were passed down
from
father to son without recourse to schools. But above all, the
references
to the mother in 1:8; 4:3;
argument.
Whybray argued cogently:
Here the father and mother are placed on
exactly the same footing
as teachers of their children.... The
phraseology of these sentences
corresponds almost exactly to that of
their Egyptian counterparts...;
and this throws into greater relief the
one feature which is entirely
unique in them: the mention of the
mother. It is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that this feature is an
example of the adaptation of
the Egyptian tradition to the peculiar
situation in which the Israelite
instructions were composed: a domestic
situation in which the
father and mother together shared the
responsibility for the educa-
tion of the child.45
But while these sayings originated in
the courtiers' homes, they
seem
to have been disseminated in Mesopotamia and
the
schools for most of these texts have been unearthed in scribal
schools.
The Satire on the Trade Winds reads,
"The beginning of
the
instruction which a man of the ship's cabin, whose name was
Duauf's son Khety, made for his son, [whose] name was Pepy, as
he
was journeying upstream [to] the
into
the
many
of the extant copies of these texts are obviously schoolboy
efforts
to reproduce what their instructors were teaching them. In
ment of all
THE MEANING OF
WISDOM
Crenshaw justly complained that "the
many attempts to define wisdom
have not been altogether successful."46 He is well aware
however,
that efforts to understand this term so central to the teach-
45 Whybray, Wisdom in
Proverbs, p. 42.
46 James L. Crenshaw, Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom (New York: KTAV Publishing
House, 1976), p. 3.
The Book of
Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature / 233
ing of the Book of Proverbs have
been greatly advanced through an
understanding
of its Egyptian equivalent Ma'at. The Egyptian term,
like
Hebrew hmAk;HA ("wisdom"),
lies at the heart of its wisdom
teaching.
A section in the Instruction of Ptah-hotep presents Ma'at
in
these terms:
Ma'at is good and its
worth is lasting. It has not been disturbed
since the day of its creator, whereas he
who transgresses its ordi-
nances is punished. It
lies as a path in front even of him who knows
nothing. Wrongdoing [?] has never yet
brought its venture to port.
It is true that evil may gain wealth but
the strength of truth is that
it lasts; a man can say: "It was
the property of my father."47
From
this statement
The Egyptians recognized a divine order,
established at the time
of creation; this order is manifest in
nature in the normalcy of
phenomena; it is manifest in society as
justice; and it is manifest in
an individual's life as truth. Ma'at is this
order, the essence of
existence, whether we recognize it or
not.48
This notion of a fixed, eternal
righteous order does compare
favorably
with the biblical meaning of "wisdom." The figures of
speech
used in the first section of the Book of Proverbs (1:2-9:18)
suggest
that it is Yahweh's eternal and righteous order granting
life
to those who walk in it. In
preacher
(Lady Wisdom) who laughs at the calamity of the fools
who
ignored her or disdainfully rejected her, that is, it is an inviolable
righteous
order. In
of
time. According to
the
cosmos. The point of this statement seems to be that wisdom is the
principle
that accounts for order and life found in creation. In
4:10-27
in a series of poems it is designated "the way," that is, it is an
ordered
realm without imperfections. In 8:1-11 an evangel proclaims
that
righteousness, justice, and truth are the way to lasting well-being.
In
above
all in man at the time of creation. The point of this comparison
seems
to be that it is an eternal order existing for man's good.
Finally
in 9:1-18 Dame Wisdom contends with Dame Folly in their rival invitations for
the soul of the simpleton. In a word, wisdom is a potent righteous force
opposed by a potent unrighteous force.
47
48 Ibid.,
p. 63.
234 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
The Egyptian concept of Ma'at has helped
gain from these
metaphors
the meaning that wisdom is God's fixed order for life,
an
order opposed by chaos and death. But man must choose by faith
to
trust the Lord who stands behind this created order.
THE THEOLOGY OF
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
The Egyptian sages seem to have
discerned values in Ma'at
similar
to those affirmed in
efforts
of Budge49 and Gressmann,50
it has been clear that the Instruc-
tion of Amen-em-Ope most closely
approximates the teachings of
the
Book of Proverbs, especially the "Thirty Sayings of the Wise"
in
Proverbs 22:17-24:22.
Simpson called attention to the
following parallels, among
many
others, between the Hebrew and Egyptian works.51
1. "Better
a little with the fear of the Lord
than great
wealth with turmoil.
Better a meal of
vegetables where there is love
than a fattened
calf with hatred"
(Prov. 15:16-17,
NIV).
"Better is
poverty at the hand of God
than riches in
the storehouse.
Better is bread
with happy heart
than riches with
vexation" (Amen. 9:5-8).
2. "In
his heart a man plans his course,
but the Lord
determines his steps"
(Prov. 16:9,
NIV).
"The words
which men say are one thing.
The thing which
God does is another"
(Amen. 19:16).
3. "Do
not say, 'I'll pay you back for this wrong!'
Wait for the
Lord, and he will deliver you"
(Prov. 20:22,
NIV).
"Say not,
'Find me a redeemer,
for a man who hateth me hath injured me'
49 E.A.W.
Budge, The Teaching of Amen-em-apt, Son of Kanekht (
M. Hopkinson & Co.,
1924).
50 Hugo Gressmann,
atur
(Berlin: Karl Curtius, 1925).
51 D. C. Simpson,
"The Hebrew Book of Proverbs and the Teaching of
Amenophis," Journal
of Egyptian Archaeology 12 (1926): 232-39.
The Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature /
235
Sit
down at the hand of God;
your tranquility will overthrow
them"
(Amen. 22:3-4,
7-8).
4.
"Do not make friends with a
hot-tempered man,
do not associate
with one easily angered,
or you may learn his ways
and get yourself
ensnared" (Prov.
"Do not associate to thyself a
passionate man,
nor approach him
for conversation.
Leap not to cleave to that [fellow],
lest a terror
carry thee away"
(Amen. 11:13-15;
13:8-9).
5.
"Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
have the wisdom to show restraint.
Cast
but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
for they will surely sprout wings
and fly off to the sky like an
eagle"
(Prov. 23:4-5,
NIV).
"Labor
not to seek increase
…………………………………………………………….
[perchance]
they have made themselves wings like geese,
they have flown to heaven" (Amen.
9:14-10:4).
These individual sayings not only agree
in form and sometimes
even
in wording, but when viewed collectively they share the same
ethical
and social ideals. Lichtheim summarizes the ideal
man, "the
silent
man," in this Egyptian text in this way:
[He] is content with a humble position
and a minimal amount of
material possessions. His chief
characteristic is modesty. He is
self-controlled, quiet, and kind toward
people, and he is humble
before God. This ideal man is indeed not
a perfect man, for per-
fection is now viewed
as belonging only to God.52
Here again space does not permit
discussion of a much-debated
issue
related to these sapiential texts, namely, how this
striking
relationship
between the Bible and these pagan texts is to be
accounted
for. Suffice it to say here that Oesterley seems to
have
the
best of the arguments in his contention that both go back to a
common
stock of international, pan-oriental, proverbial literature.53
52 Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, p. 146.
53 W. O. E. Oesterley,
"The 'Teaching of Amen-em-Qpe'
and the Old
Testament," Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft 45 (1927): 9-24.
236 / Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
But the question still remains, In what
way is the theology of
Proverbs
unique? Indeed, anyone familiar with studies comparing
other
literary forms of the Bible with their counterparts in the
ancient
needs
to be expanded: In what way is the Old Testament unique?
The
theological significance of the Book of Proverbs does not depend
on
the originality of its individual sentences or sayings any more
than
the theological significance of the so-called Book of the Cove-
nant rests in the
originality of its individual commandments. These
can
be paralleled at point after point in the Babylonian, Assyrian, and
Hittite
laws, and they clearly reflect a common body of ancient Near
Eastern
legal tradition. The same is true of
stamped
by a hymnology common to the ancient Near East. The
theological
significance of the Old Testament rests rather on the
connection
of all this literature with Yahweh, the God of Israel.
The
theological significance of the Book of Proverbs rests in its clear
affirmation
that Yahweh brought "wisdom" into existence, revealed
it
to man, and as Guarantor upholds this moral order.
Hubbard pointed in this direction when
he wrote, "Pagan
wisdom
though it, too, may be religious has no anchor in the cove-
nant-God. ..."54
The pagan sages do not even know the name of
the
God who created and sustains the fixed moral and ethical order
that
their consciences bore witness to.
this
lack in the Egyptian texts: "But is it not remarkable that none
of
the gods are mentioned by name in any of the 'teachings'? When
the
Egyptians appeal to 'God,' ...they impart to the divine interest
in
man's behavior a distinctly impersonal character."55
Keimer put it this
way: "All in all, one has the impression that
there
is for Amenemope but one God; it remains open to the
in-
dividual, however, to
represent this highest being as he will."56
Paul's
famous sermon to the Athenians, in which he related their
54 D. A. Hubbard,
"Wisdom," in The New Bible
Dictionary (
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962), p. 1,333.
55
Amen-em-ope has an "urgott" in view, both
suppose
that Egyptian netjer
("god") designates an individual's personal god,
his god ("Der Freie Wille
Gottes in der aegyptischen Weisheit," Sagesses,
pp.
103-20). Joseph Vergote believes that a distinction
can be made between
the
mention of "specified gods" and the anonymous "unique" god
("La
notion de Dieu dans les Livres
de sagesse egyptiens,"
Sagesses,
pp. 159-90).
56 Ludwig Keimer, "The Wisdom of Amen-em-ope and the Proverbs of
Solomon,"
American Journal of Semitic Languages and
Literatures 43
(1926-27): 11.
The
Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature / 237
unknown
god with the Creator and the God who raised Jesus Christ
from
the dead, springs immediately to mind (Acts 17: 22-31).
Since the Egyptians did not know the
name of this "urgott,"
with
whom they had no personal relationship, they do not attribute
their
understanding of the fixed order to him. Of course, this is
strikingly
different from the claim made in Proverbs 2:6: "For the
LORD
gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and
understanding"
(NIV).
Finally, it should be noted that the
Egyptian fathers did not
call
on their sons to trust an impersonal, unnamed God. By contrast
the
godly Hebrew courtiers realized that ultimately the son must
trust
in Yahweh who founded, revealed, and upheld this fixed moral
order.
Its promises were only as sure as He is trustworthy.57 It is
instructive
to note that in the introduction to the "Thirty Sayings
of
the Wise," which bears such a strong resemblance to chapter
one
in the Instruction of Amen-em-Ope, the Israelite sage
uniquely
adds
that his purpose is that his readers' "trust may be in the LORD"
(Prov.
22:19, NIV). In that unique addition the essential theological
relevance
and distinctiveness of the biblical book stands out. That
demand
for faith informs the whole book (cf. Prov. 3:5-6 and the
recurrent
expression, "Fear the LORD" [1:7], which is the motto
of
the book).
SOME EXEGETICAL
PROBLEMS
On the basis of the similarity between
the sayings collected in
Proverbs
22:17-24:22 and the Instruction of Amen-em-Ope and
the
fact that both works contain thirty sayings - a point stated
explicitly
in Amen-em-Ope 27:7 - most
modern versions emend
the
obscure Kethibh
readings MOwl;wi "day before yesterday" =
"heretofore"
(?), and the Qere reading, MywiliwA "officer" = "excel-
lent"
(?), to Mywilow; "thirty."
In Proverbs 24:12 Yahweh is represented
as one "who weighs
the
heart." This figure goes back to the Egyptian god Thoth, who
is
often represented as standing at the judgment of the dead beside
the
scales with the human heart.
The Septuagint and some ancient versions
have rendered the
ambiguous
rw,xE of Proverbs 23:
1 by "note well what is before
you,"
57 Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in
p. 193.
238 /
Bibliotheca Sacra -July-September 1979
while
other versions have "note well who
is before you." The parallel
in
Amen-em-Ope, "Look at the cup that is before you,"
suggests
that
the Septuagint and those versions agreeing with it have the
better
translation.
CONCLUSION
The contribution of the ancient Near
Eastern sapiential litera-
ture to biblical
studies is apparent. It helps to establish the plausibility
of
a position contending for the preexilic date of the
content of the
Book
of Proverbs and for the historical credibility of those texts
which
attribute their authorship to Solomon. A "proverb" can now
be
defined more accurately and confusion with other literary forms
in
the book can be avoided. There is firm reason to think that the
text
of the Book of Proverbs was transmitted conservatively, and
that
the attempt to arrange its sources chronologically by distinguish-
ing so-called earlier, profane texts
from later, sacred texts is wrong-
headed.
The structure of the literary forms within the book and of
the
book itself, along with its anthological arrangement, no longer
appears
so disconnected as it once did. As the sayings and poems
within
the book are read, one now envisions a godly, noble couple
instructing
their children. No longer can wisdom be defined sim-
plistically as "the
practical application of knowledge." Instead
wisdom
must be thought of as a broad, theological concept denoting
a
fixed, righteous order to which the wise man submits his life. Also
commentaries
should appeal to ancient sources to clarify obscure
texts
where that is possible.
These sources also provide data for the
systematic theologian.
The
shape and form of the Word of God was popular in its own time
and
even some of its material is similar to that found in the pagan
world.
The way in which these inspired sages integrated contemporary
literature
with their faith provides a model for the saint today.
Moreover,
one is forcibly reminded that while the Word of God
is
unchanging, his understanding of it is progressing.
:
|| Pope Shenouda || Father Matta || Bishop Mattaous || Fr. Tadros Malaty || Bishop Moussa || Bishop Alexander || Habib Gerguis || Bishop Angealos || Metropolitan Bishoy ||
|| The Orthodox Faith (Dogma) || Family and Youth || Sermons || Bible Study || Devotional || Spirituals || Fasts & Feasts || Coptics || Religious Education || Monasticism || Seasons || Missiology || Ethics || Ecumenical Relations || Church Music || Pentecost || Miscellaneous || Saints || Church History || Pope Shenouda || Patrology || Canon Law || Lent || Pastoral Theology || Father Matta || Bibles || Iconography || Liturgics || Orthodox Biblical topics || Orthodox articles || St Chrysostom ||
|| Bible Study || Biblical topics || Bibles || Orthodox Bible Study || Coptic Bible Study || King James Version || New King James Version || Scripture Nuggets || Index of the Parables and Metaphors of Jesus || Index of the Miracles of Jesus || Index of Doctrines || Index of Charts || Index of Maps || Index of Topical Essays || Index of Word Studies || Colored Maps || Index of Biblical names Notes || Old Testament activities for Sunday School kids || New Testament activities for Sunday School kids || Bible Illustrations || Bible short notes|| Pope Shenouda || Father Matta || Bishop Mattaous || Fr. Tadros Malaty || Bishop Moussa || Bishop Alexander || Habib Gerguis || Bishop Angealos || Metropolitan Bishoy ||
|| Prayer of the First Hour || Third Hour || Sixth Hour || Ninth Hour || Vespers (Eleventh Hour) || Compline (Twelfth Hour) || The First Watch of the midnight prayers || The Second Watch of the midnight prayers || The Third Watch of the midnight prayers || The Prayer of the Veil || Various Prayers from the Agbia || Synaxarium