Proverbs 2a

2:1-15. My child, 

if you accept my words

                  and treasure up my commandments within you,

making your ear attentive to wisdom

                  and inclining your heart to understanding,

if you indeed cry out for insight

                  and raise your voice for understanding,

if you seek it like silver

                  and search for it as for hidden treasures—

then you will understand the fear of the LORD

                  and find the knowledge of God.

For the LORD gives wisdom;

                          from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;

                          he is a shield to those who walk blamelessly,

guarding the paths of justice

                  and preserving the way of his faithful ones.

Then you will understand righteousness and justice

         and equity, every good path,

for wisdom will come into your heart,

         and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

prudence will watch over you,

         and understanding will guard you.

It will save you  

from the way of evil,

                 from those who speak perversely,

who forsake the paths of uprightness

                  to walk in the ways of darkness,

who rejoice in doing evil

         and delight in the perverseness of evil,

those whose paths are crooked

         and who are devious in their ways.

As with much sapiential, or wisdom, literature, Chapter 2 is a well-crafted proposition. This section begins with an address: “My child,” as does the previous chapter (1:8,10,15). Then the passage works its way to a conclusion, “therefore” (2:20-22). The next chapter begins a new thought with the same address: “My child” (3:1), so we know that the presentation is ongoing.

Notice in this first sub-section the form of the argument: ‘If’ (1, 3, 4), ‘then’ (5, 9), ‘for/because’ (6, 10), and ‘it will’ (12). The following sub-section, which we will look at next week, finishes the thought with: ‘you will’ (16) and ‘therefore’ (20). The point is that the author is not writing unrelated random thoughts, but rather is trying to put received wisdom into a logical form, first for his child, and also for the coming generations.

In the first chapter, Solomon has imagined Lady Wisdom walking through city, perhaps like Diogenes,[1] crying out to attract those who will listen to wise words and thoughts (1:23). By contrast, the first four verses of this chapter encourage the listener to “cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding” (2:3). So the overall image is that while Lady Wisdom is seeking those who will listen, those who desire wisdom must “seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures” (2:4). Gaining insight and wisdom takes work, but the reward is great.

Any important transition in life requires a person to find a place to enter, to cross the threshold from one state of being to another. We try to represent these transition points with rituals like birthdays, graduations, and weddings. The author says that it is time to stop being a “simpleton, scoffer, or fool” (1:22); one does that by realizing first “the fear of the Lord.” “Then you will … find the knowledge of God; for the LORD gives wisdom” (2:5).  

I have spent much of my life considering the nature of knowledge, wondering in what sense both religion and science can be true, and doubting at times how much we really know. A wide-spread mental disease of our time is pride, otherwise known as ‘hubris’ when people are certain that they know all there is to know about the world. The dark side of this comes with pride in a lack of education that concludes with the feeling that the person is still smarter than ‘all them scientists and professors’. In any case, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The truth is that both science and religion are based on faith, and the best of both ways of knowing continually self-correct themselves according to experience and research. Einstein made it clear that, only if the universe is orderly will we be able to observe regularities and test theories. That is, we do science through research, in the faith that what happened once will happen again. So, we establish a foundation based on faith, and build our paradigms on that. Similarly, only if the spiritual dimension is orderly will we be able to cling to and refine our faith.

Our Old Testament studies emphasized that God created the world, and God continues to engage living beings (the universe is orderly). God develops covenant relationships full of grace and mercy; God practices justice to establish righteousness (God can be experienced). God forgives those who seek him, restores those who trust him, and empowers those who have faith in him (God loves us). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We will see later that the Gospel of Matthew, among other NT texts, portrays Jesus as the Son of David, whose teachings reveal Him to be Wisdom personified and therefore, greater/wiser than Solomon (Matthew 12:42).   

[1] Diogenes famously walked the street in the evening with a lamp, and when he was asked what he was doing, he replied, “I am looking for an honest man.” His point was that an honest man is very hard to find.