Video Transcript: The Concluding Poem of Proverbs and its Interpretive Significance

We've gotten a good look at the book of Proverbs understanding that most of it is built in  antithetic parallelism, that the little couplets two lines, generally say this, but not this, or  don't do this in order that you may do this the opposites that form a singular idea, and a  

direction in which one ought to progress. We looked at the overall structure of the book of  Proverbs, noting that it has a very clearly defined outline that the prologue sets up the  purpose of the proverbs. But then there are the lectures on wisdom and folly. And we are like  a young man who is entering society in a new neighborhood. And there are two dominant  women that might attract our attention. One is folly. One is wisdom. If we go follies direction,  we lose ourselves, we lose everything that's important, we lose our place in the world. If,  however, we will with wisdom, we gain ourselves we gain a relationship with God, the Creator, and the wisdom and the ways of creation are coming home to us. If we follow wisdom, then  the Proverbs in their collections make a lot of sense. They teach us the ways we should go  and the people that we should be. And those collections are these the proverbs of Solomon,  the sayings of the wise, along with more sayings of the wise, then the second proverbs of  Solomon collected by Hezekiah, as men about 200 years after Solomon's death, and then  those cryptic statements, the sayings of Agur, and the sayings of King Lemuel short  collections that have a very different feel, but also participate in a general sense of what  wisdom is about. But today, we're going to take a look at the epilogue, the concluding poem,  it's often identified as the wife of noble character, and it has been used on many occasions as  the dominant theme for study on things like Mother's Day. Doesn't this sound like the woman  who gave birth to you and guided your life? Isn't this the woman you want to marry? Well,  yes, maybe so and I certainly don't want to detract from its value for praising what the  women in our lives have done for us whether we're female or male. But there's something  more going on. And when we look at it as the concluding episode, in the book of Proverbs, it  has a unique function, one that we ought not to ignore. First of all, it's important to notice that this collection, the last part of Proverbs 31, in our numbering of it is actually a unique unit on  its own. It is an acrostic poem. Now we've run into acrostic poems before in the collection of  the Psalms. Here, one happens again, an acrostic poem is one in which the first letter of each  successive couplet or section begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That's  why there are 22 verses in this section, or 22 units in this section, because there are 22  letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And while we can't know this in our English or other language  translations of the of the book of Proverbs, if we were to read it in Hebrew, we would find that  the beginning letters of the successive couplets follow the sequence of the letters of the  Hebrew alphabet, it's, it's sort of the idea that reminds us of knowing everything from A to Z  from beginning to end, or in the New Testament will have that expression of Jesus. He's the  Alpha and the Omega in the Greek language. It's alpha as the first letter of the Greek  alphabet, and omega as the last letter, so everything from beginning to end or in English from A to Z. In other words, the poem is designed to be a kind of comprehensive statement or  overview of the qualities of the topic of the poem itself. And what's the topic of the poem? The perfect wife, the perfect woman, who is this ideal woman? Who is this perfect wife? Is this  what the Bible intends to say about the exact duties and responsibilities of women generally  have wives in particular, that if one takes on the responsibilities of being a wife, this is what  one ought to be doing? Well, there are all sorts of studies you will find along those lines, but I  think that it's not Not intended in that way, because it's intended to be a kind of symbolism of something larger. If you think back to the opening lectures, there, the idea is that we are all  this young man, we are all masculine, whether we're female or male, we are all masculine,  my son, now encountering two personified forms in society, there's the female folly, there's  the female wisdom. Who will you as a male be attracted to? All of us are attracted to wisdom  and folly? Which one attracts us more? Who will we go with? If we go with wisdom, we marry  wisdom, wisdom becomes our wife, whether we're female or male. And the rest of the book of Proverbs is essentially the furnishings in the marriage house between us and wisdom. As we  marry wisdom, this is how the House of Wisdom functions. This is life, in tandem with wisdom. This is what things look like and our experiences and how we see through the windows of the  House of Wisdom. If we've chosen wisdom, we've lived in wisdoms house. And now the  concluding acrostic poem is not about any woman in general in society, it's not about a 

rigorous checklist for what the good wife should be. It's not the qualities of social behavior  that are intended and pre scripted by the Bible for every woman. But instead, this is how  wisdom has treated us and how wisdom functions as our wife in the marriage relationship that matters most. So the concluding poem summarizes the good life created by wisdom. And  that, I think, is a different way of taking a look at this acrostic poem, which is larger and more  significant and ties into not just how should we treat our mothers on Mother's Day? Or what  should we be looking for as males in female partners? Or us as females? What should we set  up as our goals for life, but rather, how should we as females and males, generally in society,  in our understanding of life, as given shaped by a creator, find our way into the depths of  relationships that truly matter? Now there's a note that should go along with this in this  personification of wisdom, particularly in Proverbs chapter eight. Remember, this is one of the lectures on wisdom at the beginning of the book of Proverbs, there's a section that makes  wisdom, personal, and like a creative partner for Yahweh. Since in the Gospel of John in the  beginning of that gospel, some of the same concepts seem to be used in a similar way to  describe Jesus as the word of God present in creation, active and creation, and now  personified in the incarnation of the Christ as Jesus on earth. Some theologians have tried to  interpret or conflate these two ideas, the idea of the wisdom in Proverbs eight and the pre  incarnate manifestation of the Son of God who becomes Jesus. Well, I think both of these need to stand on their own. And while you can find many helpful studies about those things, it's  probably not going to enhance your understanding of either the Gospel of John or the person  of Jesus, or what this particular passage in the book of Proverbs is all about. It's highly  speculative. And it doesn't add much to either our thoughts about wisdom as the guiding  force of our relationship with God, or our understanding of who Jesus is, and probably we  should not go in that direction. But it has been done often and so I bring it to your attention.  While much of the book of Proverbs exists as these very brief, usually two line antithetical  parallelism nuggets about living wisely, they only make sense after reading and  understanding the lectures on wisdom and folly that opened the book as a whole chapters  one through nine. If at the end of those lectures we as the son that's being referred to  whether male or female, choose folly as our life companion, the rest of the book means  nothing to us, but if we choose wisdom as our life companion, the rest of the book is  essentially the atmosphere and furnishings in the House of Wisdom, the things we see and do  from day to day. That's why these proverbs are life statements, how do you act day by day by  day. In other words, the Proverbs themselves are the lifestyle of those who have committed to a lifetime relationship with God, as manifested in the personification of wisdom. So the  connections between the Proverbs and the Wisdom literature of other nations may well show  the success of God's activity through Israel, by which the wisdom of Solomon became  recognized throughout the ancient near east as symbolic of the life of Israel with its God. And  so we participate in wisdom. And in so doing live lives that become living witnesses, have our  relationship with God. In that sense, Proverbs is extremely missional. Much to think about,  about the book of Proverbs.