What the book is
Proverbs teaches how to live well in God’s world. It opens with a father urging his son to listen, and with Wisdom herself, pictured as a woman calling in the streets and at the city gates. Then come collections of short sayings, most of them two lines long, about the things that fill ordinary days: hard work and laziness, honest and dishonest words, money and generosity, friends and neighbours, anger, pride, parents and children. Its motto stands at the start:
Knowledge begins with the fear of the LORD, but fools treat wisdom and discipline with contempt.
The book does not promise that the wise will never suffer; Job and Ecclesiastes sit beside it to say that life is more tangled than that. But it insists that wisdom begins with God, and that how we speak and work and treat others matters.
Who wrote it, and when
The book opens with “the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel” (1:1), and Solomon was remembered as the great collector of sayings (1 Kings 5:12, which is 4:32 in most English Bibles). But Proverbs names other hands as well: proverbs “collected and copied by the officials of Hezekiah, king of Judah” two centuries later (25:1), “sayings of the wise” (22:17; 24:23), Agur son of Jakeh (30:1), and King Lemuel, who passes on what his mother taught him (31:1). Part of the sayings of the wise is close in wording to an Egyptian book of instruction, the Instruction of Amenemope, which shows Israel’s sages knew the wisdom of their neighbours. The book was most likely gathered over several centuries and reached its final form after the exile.
How the book is laid out
- A father’s instruction and Lady Wisdom (1–9): longer poems urging the young to choose wisdom over folly, with Wisdom and Folly as two women calling to the passer-by.
- The proverbs of Solomon (10:1–22:16): short sayings, most of them in two contrasting lines.
- The sayings of the wise (22:17–24:34).
- More proverbs of Solomon, copied by Hezekiah’s men (25–29).
- The words of Agur (30) and of Lemuel (31:1–9).
- The capable wife (31:10–31): a poem in which each line begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
How Open Word Bible translates Proverbs
Lines of poetry. Proverbs is poetry, and the text keeps each saying in its lines, at every level and in every language. Most sayings set two lines side by side to compare or contrast them. See Hebrew poetry and parallelism.
The fear of the LORD. The book’s key phrase means reverent awe and trust that shapes the whole of life, not terror. The Readable level spells this out. See “The fear of the LORD”.
Wisdom brought into being (8:22). “The LORD brought me into being as the first of his ways.” The Hebrew verb can mean “possessed”, “acquired”, “created” or “begot”, and this verse was at the centre of the fourth-century debate over whether the Son of God was created. The draft says “brought into being”, marks the decision uncertain, and gives the other readings in a footnote.
Train up a child (22:6). “Start children off on the way they should go.” The Hebrew says “according to his way”, which may mean the way he ought to go, the way suited to the child’s own nature, or even, as a warning, the way the child wants to go. The draft follows the first, marks the decision uncertain, and footnotes the others.
Answer a fool? (26:4–5). “Do not answer fools on the terms of their folly”, and in the next verse, “Answer fools as their folly deserves.” The two sayings stand side by side on purpose: wisdom is knowing which one the moment needs.
Agur’s opening words (30:1). The names Ithiel and Ucal may instead be words: “I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God, and worn out.” The draft follows the Hebrew vowels, which read names, and the footnote gives the other readings.
The capable wife (31:10). “She is worth far more than red coral”, the “rubies” of older Bibles. The poem praises a woman of strength and skill who runs a household, trades, and speaks with wisdom.