We don’t spend a whole lot of time in the book of Proverbs in our worship, so I think a little introduction could be helpful before we jump into the second reading.
Proverbs is an interesting book; it’s a book, not unlike the Bible itself, that is more like a collection. There are a number of different pieces from a number of different eras, based on the literature of a number of different cultures all smooshed together into one. (Smooshed – that’s a technical scholarly term.) There are the short two-liners containing teachable lessons, a favorite of the Israelite sages who put the book together in the royal courts of Israel after the return from the Babylonian exile. There are extended poems about wisdom in a variety of forms, but one of the standout features is the personification of wisdom as a woman. As we know, there aren’t a lot of Scriptures where women are center stage in such an important way – especially where they are depicted as carrying an important divine attribute as wisdom.
Some of these personifications of wisdom as a woman, including the one we will hear today, come in poetry that is set up as a father giving advice to his son, or maybe a teacher to a student. I think that’s important because it’s not quite the same as a prophet who speaks a message from God to God’s people. It’s poetry, with all the literary forms we’ve learned in high school, such as parallelism and hyperbole and personification, and it’s instructional, trying to both explain and motivate toward a particular result.
With that introduction let’s hear the words of Proverbs from the 1st chapter, verses 20-33
Woman Wisdom is not a woman who is content on the sidelines, is she?
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