I could have used God’s Wisdom in Proverbs twenty-some years ago when the Gothard cult was teaching me that the Proverbs are absolute laws and promises. If you live by the rules contained therein (and elsewhere in Scripture), your life will be all flowers and kisses. If you work diligently, tithe faithfully, and follow a number of other financial laws, you will never suffer want. If you raise your children right, they will grow up to be saintly sages. Less desirable results indicate some failure on your part. It must be so, because God promised! (Psalm 37:25; Proverbs 22:6) It was a kind of prosperity gospel, only a lot less fun than the Osteen variety.
As Dan Phillips explains, the Proverbs contain no such absolute promises and threats. They are, as I’ve taken to calling them, “divine rules of thumb” (my term, not his).
[I]f we are to read and understand Proverbs wisely, we must apply different interpretive rules from those we employ in reading and understanding (say) Philippians. The latter is a little letter, the former is a big book of pithy pointers. We could express the central principle this way:
Proverbs convey pithy points and principles,
not precious particular promises.Remember that poetry by design is terse. If that is true of poetry in general, it is true of proverbs to the tenth power.
It is important that we grasp the fact that this is intentional. It is that nature of the genre. A “knock-knock” joke is what it is. It is a successful joke (if it is a good one), not a failed dictionary. They are not failed prophecies or systematic theologies. Proverbs by design lays out pointed observations, meant to be memorized and pondered, not always intended to be applied “across the board” to every situation without qualification.
The point was well-made be Derek Kinder:
Naturally [proverbs] generalize, as a proverb must, and may therefore be charged with making life too tidy to be true. But nobody objects to this in secular sayings, for the very form demands a sweeping statement and looks for a hearer with his wits about him. We need no telling that a maxim like “Many hands make a light work” is not the last word on the subject, since “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” [The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes]We can fairly easily think of illustrations form our own culture’s proverbs. Take the pair:
Look before you leapAnd yet . . .
He who hesitates is lost.Do these two proverbs contradict? Formally, of course they do. So, which one is true? Both! One applies to some situations, the second comes to play in others. The first warns against haste, the second against dithery indecision. The first could apply (say) to a marriage-decision; the second (say) to responding to a terrific, limited-supply sale. The application requires wisdom on our part.
—Dan Phillips, God’s Wisdom in Proverbs (Kress Biblical Resources, 2011), 20—21.
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