Proverbs 1:3 states one of the purposes of the Proverbs: “To receive instruction in wise behavior” (NASB) or, as Dan Phillips renders it, “For receiving intelligent discipline.” Through these proverbs, God has something to teach us — and he has a particular way of teaching it.
How do we “receive” this education? Should we pray for God to give us wisdom, and then be open to “receive” it, directly? This is what the dominant mystical element on the church would have us believe today. “Just pray for wisdom, and then listen for that still, small voice within, as the Holy Spirit whispers in your spiritual inner ear,” we are counseled, often by widely-respected Christian speakers and pastors.
But that literally cannot be what Solomon means. Remember, Solomon is saying that this is the purpose of his writing this book. Proverbs took a lot of effort and strain and sweat to write. It takes a lot of effort and strain and sweat to study, understand and apply.
So ask yourself this: Why should Solomon write a book to give us something we could get easier and better by mystical channels? Of the formula for wisdom is “Just add prayer and mystical openness, and pop! wisdom!”—then why waste all the quills and papyrus? Just tell us to go mentally limp, and you will save a few trees . . . or, rather, reeds.
This “intelligent discipline” will not come to the intellectually lazy. Intelligent discipline becomes ours only as we diligently apply ourselves to obtaining what Yahweh has objectively given, once and for all time, in Scripture. To access it, we must open up, bear down, and accept instruction.
—Dan Phillips, God’s Wisdom in Proverbs (Kress Biblical Resources, 2011), 46–47.
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