What the Old Testament Means to Us. . . No.4

MORE ON THE WISDOM BOOKS

All cultures, ancient and modem alike, have had their Wisdom movements. Even though we in America are known more for our pragmatism than for our wisdom, we have nonetheless had our sages and their wise sayings. As with ancient cultures our canons of wisdom are mostly anonymous. They emerge somehow out of the hard school of experience. We don’t know who said these things, but we don’t question the wisdom they teach:

A stitch in time saves nine.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

There’s no fool like an old fool.

Every tub ought to stand on its own bottom.

An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.

A bird in the hand is worth two in a bush.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

We have had our sages, some of whom have also been political figures, such as Benjamin Franklin, whose “A penny saved is a penny earned” is remembered beyond all of his political statements, as is “Early to bed and early to rise makes one healthy, wealthy, and wise.” We all remember one thing that Harry Truman said if nothing else, “The buck stops here!,” and we cannot question the lesson it teaches.

So we have had our sages, whether comedians like Jack Benny and Bob Hope, who were often as wise as they were funny, and homespun philosophers like Will Rogers and Eric Hoffer, who would come as near as anyone to personifying the “Wisdom” of the ancients in a modem American context. They represent a “Common Sense” mentality that has always characterized American thought.

There is one important difference in that the ancients grappled with the problem of evil and human suffering more than we have. That may be because we are not yet an old culture and have not had the experience of the ancients. But we have moved in that direction with such aphorisms as “Let sleeping dogs lie,” “Every cloud has a silver lining,” and “Its an ill wind that blows no good.”

Just as our Wisdom is more humanistic than religious, so it was with the ancients. Hardly any of it was spiritual, but the kind of practical knowledge that atheists could accept as well as believers. While ancient Israel borrowed from the Wisdom of the Egyptians and Babylonians, they spiritualized a lot of it. It remains true, however, that there are hundreds of Proverbs, the Bible’s most obvious Wisdom book, that say nothing of God or anything uniquely religious. For example, “A merry heart doeth good like medicine” (Pro. 17:22) and “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Pro. 23:7) appeals to believer and unbeliever alike.

But still Israel canonized ancient Wisdom in one particular way: Wisdom was the gift of God and came down from heaven. The beginning of wisdom was the fear of the Lord. They went even further, insisting that Wisdom had its retribution. If one were righteous (wise), he would be rewarded in this world with good things and long life; if he were wicked (foolish), he would be punished in this world with sickness and tragedy. We saw in our study of Job that this was a predominate theme in that Wisdom book.

It should be noted that while the Wisdom movement was prominent in Israel and of long duration, and at last occupying more than its share of the Old Testament canon, it was not particularly appreciated in other parts of the Old Testament, especially by the prophets. Jeremiah seems to have little use for them when he says, “The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord; so what wisdom do they have?” (Jer. 8:9). Those who persecuted Jeremiah were willing to do away with him, for they would still have “counsel from the wise,” which they could abide more than a firey prophet (Jer. 18:18).

Proverbs is the flagship book for the Wisdom literature of the Bible, even more than Job, not only because many of them were believed to be authored by Solomon, Israel’s most famous sage, but also because of their simplicity and practicality. There are no theological mysteries. We may have a problem in heeding the wisdom of Proverbs, but we have no problem in understanding it. Even though Proverbs is not theologically weighty it gives us what is probably the best definition of religion in all the Bible, which is my choice for its greatest passage:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And he shall direct your paths. (Pro. 3:5-6)

Other gems from this book reveal how a lot of its sayings have become part of our common speech. It is like the man reading Shakespeare for the first time who was surprised with how many quotations there were!

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. (1:7)

If sinners entice you, do not consent. (1:10)

The memory of the righteous is blessed. (10:7)

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty. (16:32)

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches. (22:1)

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (22:16)

Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth. (27:2)

Faithful are the wounds of a friend. (27:6)

The wicked flee when no one pursues. (28:1)

Where there is no vision, the people perish. (29:18)

While such emphasis on worldly wisdom in this book may be disconcerting to the Christian, it may be observed that one proverb in seven is religious in theme, and they are more practical than speculative. It should not be surprising that there is little of God’s grace in this book, which is typical of Wisdom literature. But God always rewards such virtues as truth, humility, charity, and purity of heart, and always punishes the contrary vices.

When one gets into Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, two other Wisdom books, he may find himself asking as Jeremiah did, What kind of wisdom is this? It is understandable that these books became a part of the Bible only after extended controversy in the Jewish church. One has to be a real sleuth to find the word of God in either of them, even though there are some important truths stated, in Ecclesiastes at least. It is the message of these books that a Christian reader finds bewildering, if there is a message at all.

The theme of Ecclesiastes, which is blatantly pessimistic (“vanity” appears 25 times!) is emptiness. Life is nothing but emptiness—“Vanity of vanities” saith the preacher. Life is an ongoing series of unrelated and meaningless experiences. It is here that the book provides one of the most fascinating portions of all the Bible, the cadence of which is spellbinding. Part of it goes like this: To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. . ..

a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

This “wise” man is saying what a Christian cannot believe, that life is an illusion, a succession of senseless events. The book begins and ends with a thesis that the believer must reject, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” This gripping passage about a time for this and a time for that is a good example of how one might distinguish between “what it meant” and “what it means.” One might take this passage to mean that God has ordained certain conflicting forces in our lives and we are to yield ourselves to His sovereign will, but that is not what this sage was saying. We have to be careful about using the Bible that way.

But in spite of its unacceptable fatalism Ecclesiastes passes along a few gems of Wisdom, and it is here that we might find the word of God:

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts. (3:11)

God is in heaven, and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few. (5:2)

God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. (7:29)

Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. (11:1)

Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, “I have no pleasure in them.” (12:1)

Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. (12:7)

The book ends with one of the Bible’s great passages, which stands over against its pessimism and fatalism: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. “ The last verse’ of the book points to judgement: “For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil.”

Like Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the last of the canonical Wisdom books, would not have made it into the Bible except that the magic name of Solomon was connected with it. While the ancient Jewish church managed to interpret it as an allegory of God’s love for his people and the ancient Christian church as an allegory of Christ’s love for his church, it is difficult to view the book objectively and see it as anything more than an erotic love poem. Since it is so full of passion (“He shall lie all night between my breasts”) and doesn’t so much as even mention the name of God, one is amazed to find it in the Bible, except for tradition.

Unlike Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon has no great passages to give it some relevance. One beautiful line, “His banner over me is love,” has become a children’s song in the church and made to refer to God, but in this poem it was said by one whose “navel is like a round goblet” and whose “two breasts are like two fawns” and was addressed to him who “kisses me with the kisses of his mouth.” It is understandable that one would not likely turn to this book for spiritual strength, and it is also understandable that that playful seminary student in a moden play would name it as his favorite book in the Bible!

There are other Wisdom books, the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiaticus (or the Wisdom of Sirach), that were rejected as canonical by the Jewish church, and subsequently by the early Christians, that are a part of the Apocrypha and included in Roman Catholic versions of the Bible. One would only need to read these, especially Sirach, to appreciate their educational and spiritual value. I often turn to Ecclesiasticus in my Jerusalem Bible, a Roman Catholic version, and through the years I have underscored choice passages. I pass along a few of them:

Marry a daughter off, and you have finished a great work; but give her to a man of sense. (7:25)

Do not gloat over a man’s death; remember we all must die. (8:8)

A king today is a corpse tomorrow. (10:12)

No one is meaner than the man who is mean to himself. (14:6)

It is better to die childless than to have godless ones. (16:4)

Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Courage! It will not burst you! (19:10)

The crown of old men is ripe experience, their true glory, the fear of the Lord. (25:6)

Any wound rather than the wound of the heart! Any spite rather than the spite of a woman! (25:13)

Do not wolf your food or you will earn dislike. (31:19)

I could go on and on, for there are 51 chapters of such stuff. I delight in it, and I must say that Sirach was my kind of a guy, with a zest for life and a sense of humor. And he liked women, “if her tongue is kind and gentle.” One can find lots of compliments in Sirach to pass along to his wife, such as “Like the sun rising over the mountain of the Lord is the beauty of a good wife in a well-kept house.” And he is the one biblical writer that has a good word for doctors, “Honour the doctor with the honour that is his due in return for his services; for he too has been created by the Lord.” He also had a love for history. There are several chapters honoring Israel’s great, which begins with “Now let us praise illustrious men.” Abraham was his favorite—“no one was ever his equal in glory.”

So, wisdom is what the Wisdom books are all about, and that is what they mean to us. Wisdom comes from the Lord; it enriches life. There are hundreds, yea thousands, of practical suggestions on how to make the wisdom of the Lord the anchor of one’s life.

But the Christian has something important to add to all this, which is what Paul calls “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). We can’t be truly wise by following Solomon and the sages of Israel, but only in following Christ as the wisdom of God. Besides, we can’t keep the mandates of the Wisdom books any better than we can keep any other set of laws. Only by the grace of God and the power of Christ can we incorporate the wisdom of Solomon and Sirach into our lives.

It is noteworthy that Jesus did not buy the basic thesis of the sages of Israel, that good people will be rewarded in this life and evil people will be punished, and that if tragedy overtakes one it is because he has sinned. When in Lk. 13:1-5 Jesus is told how Pilate brutalized certain Galileans, mixing their blood with their sacrifices, he responded to this with, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?” He goes on to show that those eighteen people on whom the tower in Siloam fell were no worse than those on whom the tower did not fall. So, he realized that bad things may happen to good people and good things may happen to bad people.

This is another example of how all Scripture, Old or New Testament alike, has to be judged in the light of Christ, for he is the arbiter of all the Bible. While the Wisdom books must have been important to Jesus, and we can believe he knew many proverbs by heart, it is evident that he was selective in accepting their conclusions.—the Editor