The books of Judges and Kings in the Old Testament set up the Davidic monarchy before a period of exile into Assyria and Babylon. After the Israelites moved into the Promised Land, they split into two kingdoms: ten tribes became the northern Kingdom of Israel while two became the southern Kingdom of Judah. Because of their unfaithfulness, Israel is taken over by the Assyrians and Judah is taken over by the Babylonians. This background information is necessary to understanding the Wisdom literature, consisting of Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon.
These five books were written at the peak of the monarchy that God intended His people to have. 2 Chron 9:1-12 narrates what happens at the peak of the fulfilment of God’s covenant with the Israelites. The Queen of Sheba visits King Solomon and was overwhelmed at the splendor of his court (2 Chron 9:1-4). She is even more amazed at the depth of his wisdom, so much that she “had no breath” (2 Chron 9:4), and praises God for enthroning Solomon so that justice and righteousness is maintained in Israel (2 Chron 9:7). When we behold God’s wisdom, we too will have our breath taken away. In this study we’ll dive into how to approach the Wisdom literature, and how studying these books lets us understand and navigate life in a fallen world.
(A) Wisdom describes spiritual realities of life in a fallen world
It can be easy to be daunted by the Wisdom literature. Much of it is written as poetry which can be difficult to understand for many readers. How should we understand the wisdom literature? One helpful way is to think of it as bits and pieces of God’s wisdom for life.
Psalm 1 is an introduction to the writings in the rest of this book and many features of the wisdom literature can be found here. It talks about outcomes and results. It shows us what happens when we do something. Ps 1 also presents a juxtaposition, like the examples Jesus uses in his teachings. This shows the feature of Wisdom literature as an educational tool where we see God not as a law-giver, but as a wisdom-giver. All the Psalms flow out of this understanding.
The juxtaposition in Psalms 1 is presented through two ways in which one can live. The way of the blessed shows how man can be prospered (Ps 1:1-3) whereas the way of the wicked shows how man is not prospered (Ps 1:4 -7). The distinguishing factor between these two ways lies in who loves God and His law and who does not. Those who love God care about the Torah, His law. Those who do not care about the worldly laws of others.
In highlighting this distinction, Ps 1 references Moses’ words to the Israelites in Deut 4:5-8. Moses tells the Israelites to observe God’s law carefully for they will become their “wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples” (Deut 4:6), who will proclaim that the Israelites are a great nation because of the proximity of God to His people (Deut 4:7) and the righteousness of His decrees (Deut 4:8). This shows how it’s God’s laws that make the Israelites a respected people and their national pride is bolstered when they live by the Torah. The psalmist is reaching back into Israel’s history to remind them that if they live by God’s law they will be blessed.
We see an example of the blessed man referenced in Ps 1 in the character of Job, revealed in the book of Job, another part of wisdom literature. Job 1:1 describes him as a man who was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” Job is known for being righteous, and he lives by God’s law in the Torah. By those accounts he should have been blessed. Yet the rest of Job seems to prove this false.
Job 2:3-10 shows how Job seems to have lost everything including his health. But the author also narrates what happens in the heavens which shows us how all that happened had nothing to do with Job’s righteousness. God raises Job as an example of someone who has maintained his integrity despite Satan’s attempts to ruin him (Job 2:3), while Satan argues that Job will surely curse God once he feels his life falling apart (Job 2:4-5). Job proves his integrity by rebuking his wife when she tells him to curse God for his underserved suffering (Job 2:9-10). From this we see that the trials Job is put through centers around Satan’s attempts to mess up someone whom God has put His confidence in.
Once we understand this, we can understand two things. First, that bad things can happen to you even when you’re righteous. Second, that those bad things might not have anything to do with your righteousness but with greater forces acting in the world.
After Job receives bad and confusing advice from his friends, God finally speaks to him in expressive and eloquent language. He describes the fearsomeness of the monstrous leviathan in Job 41:1-10, whom no human can hope to control or subdue. Yet, like everything else under heaven, the leviathan belongs to God (Job 41:11). Isaiah 27:1 provides another way we can understand the leviathan, and why Job is immediately comforted by God’s response in Job 41. The Lord will deliver Israel by “punish[ing] Leviathan the fleeing serpent… and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” The Leviathan is a symbol of destruction that represents all that is wrong in the world. God is telling Job that though he has no power over the chaos that the leviathan represents, He does.
This wisdom helps us understand that we are no match for chaos, but that God has chaos in His hand. Job knew he could trust God, because chaos is not beyond Him. These chapters tell us some spiritual realities of life: that we will be blessed if we live by God’s law and destroyed if we deviate from it, and that sometimes life is messy, but this messiness is not beyond the God of the Bible.
The real problem with why we stop at Proverbs and don’t quite know how to go on is that we often read it as cognitive information. We don’t pause and reflect on the reality that God’s word is describing. Is it true that life is full of unexplainable disappointment and suffering? Is it true that those who live by faith often suffer? Wisdom literature calls us to look at life as it is. It tells us that we are wired to hope for Eden, heaven and home, but we are not yet there. We live in the tension of the “already and not yet”. Most, if not all, religion deals with this in some form.
(B) Wisdom imparts skill for life in a fallen world
The importance of God’s wisdom introduced in Ps 1 is continued in the book of Proverbs. The purpose of the Proverbs can be found in King Solomon’s words in Ecc 12:9-10. The Proverbs were words of delight meant to teach the people knowledge and were thus arranged “with great care” (Ecc 12:9). This shows that the Proverbs help not just our vertical relationship to God, but also our horizontal relationship to life in a fallen world. These two features of the Proverbs can be seen in the themes that Tim Keller (in the book, The Way of Wisdom) has pointed out:
“[Keller identifies these themes in the proverbs:] the fear of the Lord, God’s order perceived, God’s order disrupted,/understanding the heart, reordering the desires, temptation, understanding emotion, sins,/friendship, words, gossip, listening, conflicts,/guidance/planning/decision-making, insights for our age,/marriage, sex, parenting, money & work, power, justice.”
Some of these themes, like the fear of the Lord and God’s order perceived, concern how we live in relation to God—a vertical relationship with the Lord. Other themes, like those on gossip, sex and parenting, concern how we understand our relationship with other people—a horizontal relationship with life in a fallen world of sin. When we read the Proverbs, we should ask: what is this proverb telling me about how life works?
As an example, we can look at Proverbs 9, which presents a juxtaposition that precedes the proverbs themselves presented from chapter 10 onwards.
The two figures contrasted in Proverbs 9 are Wisdom and Folly. Wisdom’s house has seven pillars (Prov 9:1): a sign of stability and steadiness, given that seven in the Bible is the number of fullness. She serves her guests something valuable—meat and wine (Prov 9:2). She calls the simple (v3-4) because she wants them to leave their simple ways behind (Prov 9:5-6) and live walking in the way of insights that she provides (v7-9). The outcome of accepting Wisdom’s invitation is life (Prov 9:10-12). Life is obtained through fear of the Lord leading to moral wisdom which leads to an understanding of how human nature works and to live in accordance to God’s will.
Folly, in contrast, sits at her door (Prov 9:14) instead of being inside her house: a sign of idleness. She appears to have nothing to offer her guests, yet she’s loud and seductive so she is really trying to entice people with herself. Yet it’s clear that she’s not respectable and does not have good intentions. Folly gives her guests bad advice on the secrecy they can delight in (Prov 9:17-18), encouraging them to participate in their secret inner lives to enjoy pleasures that no one knows about. The Bible tells us that this is folly. Consequently, the outcome of Folly’s invitation is death (Prov 9:18).
The message arising from the juxtaposition between Wisdom and Folly is expressed earlier in Prov 3:5-6—“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” If we acknowledge God and follow His word in all that we do, our path will be straight according to God. This can be difficult as we grow older, however, and begin to rely more on our own experiences than on divine wisdom.
Wisdom gives us skill for life in a fallen world by helping us understand why people do what they do. As covenant people, we can live in wisdom about how God works instead of having to rely on our own understanding. An example of such wisdom on living life can be found in Prov 10:19: “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.” This verse cautions us to think about what we say. The more things come out of your heart, the more transgressions can come up against others and against God. We find prudent words—words of appreciation, words of love, words of thankfulness—hard because our lips are unchecked. This verse is an example of how the Proverbs tell us about spiritual realities and how to be skillful in dealing with life in a fallen world. All this wisdom flows out of the peak of the narrative of the covenant.
(C) Wisdom points us to the Davidic king and God’s own wisdom
In this section we’ll learn who wrote Proverbs, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes and how identifying this author helps us understand the hopes and problems and wisdom of the covenant people of God. The author of those three books is Solomon.
Solomon doesn’t just write Proverbs. Solomon’s appearance in Song of Solomon 3 represents the high point of the fulfilment of the covenant. He arrives in splendor, escorted by noble warriors (Song of Sol 3:7-8) and sitting on a carriage made with precious metals (Song of Sol 3:9-10), to the rejoicing of those who receive him.
As we proceed through the Song of Solomon, we see that Solomon also has a softer side. His soft side tells us that it is a wise thing to understand how love works. Love to be groomed and blossomed into marriage, is godly. Yet Song of Sol 8:4-7 also caution us about seeking out love that we are not ready for. Love is a passionate force that is “as strong as death” (Song of Sol 3:6) that cannot be easily extinguished (Song of Sol 3:7). These verses warn us that because love is so powerful, we should refrain from seeking it out until we are ready for it.
Despite all his wisdom, in Ecclesiastes Solomon gave this answer on how to live one’s life under the sun: The best we can do is to trust God until we die. Even if we have all the wisdom that Solomon had, we will all still die, and death makes everything pointless. Even faith in God.
What did Jesus have to say about this? In Luke 11:29-31, Jesus points out that Solomon’s wisdom was the best the world had to offer. He claims that Solomon couldn’t tell one the answer on how to live in a fallen world under the sun because in the end we all still die. But Jesus can tell you about life above the sun—real life. Jesus is God’s wisdom, expressed as a man. In Him we can receive more of this life, and the life after this life.
What does it mean that Jesus is God’s wisdom? It means that Jesus’ wisdom is not just the way to get you past the door to salvation. Discounting the fact that we also need to be changed by the wisdom we hear and receive, and that His messages are meant to help us understand all things and glorify him and make good decisions, is to discount a full understanding of the wisdom of Christ.
See life for how gritty it can be, then go to Jesus. He will tell you what you need to know. The greatest thing your heart needs is to go to God. Don’t seek wisdom in others. Only seek your wisdom in Him.