Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax



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3Glendon E. Bryce, "'Better'-Proverbs: An

Historical and Structural Study," in Book of Seminar



Papers, vol. 2, ed. L. C. McGaughy, (Missoula, MT: Society

of Biblical Literature, 1972), p. 348. He assumes

borrowing by Proverbs.

in the early stages, the motives were eudaemonistic and,

later, there was a shift to more religious motivation.

But, obviously, he selects and dates the material he uses

for proof and fragments the canonical text to fit his

hypothesis.1

Outside of Proverbs, McKane heightens the conflict

between the wise men and the prophets. In Hegelian

fashion, he views the Yahwistic elements in wisdom

sections as a later synthesis between the dabar-oriented

prophets, who relay a word from God, and the secular wise

men, who use 'esa. Thus, he perceives passages such as

Genesis 41:33-36 to be a reinterpretation fitted to

Israelite piety. Second Samuel 19:28 (also 14:20) is

explained as mere shrewdness, rather than as a divine

gift. McKane ignores or refashions the clear statements

of the text to fit his rather flimsily constructed model.

Such prescriptive methodology is a sad remnant of the

nineteenth century.2

Baumgartner elucidates three bases of his

evolutionary model: (1) the LXX, (2) later wisdom (Ben

Sirach), and (3) the hypostasis of wisdom in Proverbs 8.3

____________________

1Johannes Fichtner, Die altorientalische Weisheit

in ihrer israelitisch-judischen Auspragung, pp. 60-97; and

Gladson, "Retributive Paradoxes in Proverbs 10-29," p. 30.



2McKane, Prophets and Wise Men, pp. 50, 59,

61.


3Baumgartner, "The Wisdom Literature," p. 214.

While a shift in the post-exilic period must be

acknowledged, especially when one compares Sirach with

Proverbs, this development should not be read back into

earlier proverbial materials. Murphy correctly labels

this post-exilic shift as a "theologizing" or, as others

would have it, a "torahization" of wisdom.1 This is

clearly evinced in a comparison of Sirach 24 and Proverbs

8, where, for example, Sirach (24:22) identifies wisdom

with the Law of Moses. Does this demonstrate that the

Proverbial material went through a secular-to-religious

evolution or that in the post-exilic period a synthesis

took place, identifying wisdom and the Mosaic Law? It

seems to this writer that the exile may have sparked such

a synthesis.

Rylaarsdam gives a refutation of the rigid

evolutionary scheme. He writes:
We have previously indicated that the phrase [fear of

Yahweh] is a humble acknowledgment by man that he

cannot possess wisdom as God does. This is also true

in the early strata of Proverbs (15:11; 20:24; 24:12;

29:13).

The oldest parts of Proverbs teach that man

discovers wisdom; but it likewise feels that the roots

of wisdom are fixed in the God who is man's Creator.2


It is Crenshaw who has provided the most helpful analysis

____________________



1Murphy, Introduction to the Wisdom Literature of

the Old Testament, pp. 44, 48; and his "Israel's Wisdom:

A Biblical Model of Salvation," Studia Missionalia 30

(1981):34-35.

2Rylaarsdam, Revelation in Jewish Wisdom

Literature, p. 70.

of the dabar/'esa debate. He accepts the notion that the

"prophetic outlook is vertical" and that the sages' is

horizontal, but "the difference is perspective, not amount

of authority." He concludes--against those who would

relegate the authority of Proverbs to a mere recording of

generalized observations of nature--"In short, between

'Thus saith the Lord' and 'Listen, my son, to your

father's advice' there is no fundamental difference."1

Whedbee correctly destroys McKane's fantasy by noting his

failure to take into account the principle of "order"

which was so prevalent in Egyptian materials, a thousand

years prior to Solomon. Thus, the wise man was not

secular, but viewed the creation as "created and

guaranteed" by God.2 Numerous other scholars also have

objected to McKane's position. Kovacs notes the presence

of priest scribes in Egypt, which would suggest that there

was no exclusive division between the religious and

secular. He also questions the procedure of editing out

religious language when it fits perfectly with its

context.3 Crenshaw rejects a rigid evolutionary

approach,

____________________
1Crenshaw, Prophetic Conflict, pp. 119, 123.

2J. William Whedbee, Isaiah and Wisdom,

(Nashville, IL: A. R. Allenson, 1965), pp. 118-19; also

Bruce K. Waltke, "The Book of Proverbs," pp. 229, 238.

3Kovacs, "Sociological-Structural Constraints,"

pp. 306, 313.

based on the present limited knowledge of the forms and

the evolution of those forms.1

Thus, it should be concluded that--supported by

the unity of the text itself, which will be demonstrated

in this paper, and by ancient Near Eastern parallels from

over a thousand years before the text of Proverbs--the

suggestion of an evolution from secular to religious is a

twentieth-century projection back into history.


Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter has been to survey

broad conceptual approaches to wisdom: humanistic,

empirical, rational, eudaemonistic, and evolutionary. The

various authors and positions have been tabulated and some

initial generalized comments made in reaction to these

approaches. In addition, there was a brief critique of

the secular-to-sacred evolution which was suggested in the

____________________



1Crenshaw, "Wisdom," p. 263. Others who reject

this approach are: Roland Murphy, "Wisdom--Theses and

Hypostheses," in Israelite Wisdom: Theological and

Literary Essays in Honor of Sanmuel Terrien, ed. J. G.

Gammie et al. (New York: Union Theological Seminary,

1978), p. 40 (also see Murphy, "Wisdom Literature" p. 51);

Christa B. Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1-9: eine form-



und motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung unter Einbeziehung

agyptischen Vergleichsmaterials, Wissenschaftliche

Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament, vol. 22

(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1966), p. 2; and

Joseph Jensen, The Use of tora by Isaiah: His Debate with



the Wisdom Tradition, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Monograph Series, ed. P. W. Skehan, vol. 3 (Washington, DC:

The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1973), p. 30.

wisdom of pre-exilic Israel. The need for a detailed

examination of the "old" wisdom material should be

apparent from such discussions. In order to assess

properly how heavily each of the above should be stressed

and with what qualifications, there must be a detailed

scrutiny of the starting point of these discussions, that

is, the early wisdom itself. Thus, this dissertation will

examine Proverbs 10-15, which is accepted by all as some

of the oldest wisdom material in the canon. While we will

not return to make judgments on these matters, the

foundation of a syntactic analysis will be laid for a

further semantic, literary and theological analysis, which

will have rather pointed implications for many of the

above models. The syntactic analysis will reveal the

literary art, proverbial form and creative genius

exhibited by the wise men as they plied their craft,

recording the truth of the created order as they perceived

it. The wise man himself participated in the creative act

as he isolated, formulated and transformed the order he

perceived empirically into a verbal ordering which modeled

the creation he was attempting to describe. To examine in

detail how he utilized language to accomplish this feat

will bring us one step closer to the underlying principles

on which he operated. To examine how the sage

encapsulated his message will allow us to see how he

harmonized his own expressions with his own observations

on the careful (Prov 15:23; 25:11) and beneficial (Prov

12:25) use of words. An analysis of syntactic form

provides a necessary foundation for the semantic work

which will, in due season, help specify more precisely the

theological tendenz of the early wisdom of Israel. Thus,

this writer proposes a heuristic, cyclical approach by

which the Old Testament theologians offer suggested

insights, based on a general overview of the text. These,

then, must be fine-tuned by a meticulous analysis of the

text. This atomistic, detailed analysis must next be

integrated into the discourse and genre level patterns and

motifs which will, in turn, lead to the modification of

how the analysis itself is to be understood.

CHAPTER III

THE CANONICAL SETTING OF WISDOM



Introduction
While wisdom's role in the canon thematically and

presuppositionally has caused Old Testament theologians no

little concern, Old Testament exegetes have also gone

through a transition from asking "where may wisdom be

found?" to "where is wisdom not found?" This rather

recent recognition of the prolific influence of wisdom

within the canon will be surveyed, focusing on the

methodology used, rather than on the specific

argumentation for or against whether a particular passage

should or should not be designated as a text which

manifests the intellectual tradition of wisdom. The

purpose of this chapter will be (1) to survey areas where

wisdom studies have concentrated, pointing out the need

for an exact knowledge of what features characterize

wisdom before claiming its presence elsewhere, and (2) to

indicate the preponderance of the intellectual tradition

within the canon. The most balanced and discriminating

accounts of this area of study are found in an article

by Crenshaw1 and in a book by Whybray.2

Recent lists of suggested wisdom passages often

include: Genesis 1-3, 37-50 (the Joseph narrative);

Deuteronomy 1-4, 32; 2 Samuel 9-20 and 1 Kings 1-2 (the

succession narrative); 1 Kings 3-11 (the Solomon

narrative); Psalms 1, 19b, 34, 37, 49, 51, 73, 90, 92,

104, 107, 111, 112, 119, 127, and 128; Isaiah 1-39;

Jeremiah; Ezekiel 28; Daniel; Hosea; Amos; Habakkuk;

Jonah; and even Esther.3

While this inventory is by no means exhaustive, it

does give the impression of the rising awareness of wisdom

influences/traditions outside of the Solomonic and Joban

wisdom corpus. It is interesting that Whybray and

Crenshaw, scholars who have specialized in wisdom studies,

____________________

1James L. Crenshaw, "Method in Determining Wisdom

Influence upon 'Historical' Literature," JBL 88

(1969):129-42.

2R. N. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition, pp.

71-155. Whybray will scrutinize the vocabulary approach.

He also gives a rather extensive bibliography to this

whole discussion on p. 1. Crenshaw, "Method in

Determining Wisdom Influence upon 'Historical'

Literature," p. 129.



3Vid. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition, p. 154

and Crenshaw, "Method in Determining Wisdom Influence upon

'Historical' Literature," p. 129. Cf. also Kovacs,

"Sociological-Structural Constraints," pp. 173-182. For

an extensive list categorized by form, theme, vocabulary

and references to the wise, vid. Donn F. Morgan, "Wisdom

and the Prophets," in Studia Biblica, ed. E. A.

Livingstone, JSOT Supplement Series, 11 (1978), pp. 229-32.


rather than encouraging the spread of wisdom throughout

the canon, have actually immured it. Indeed, the infusion

of these new texts into the wisdom tradition has resulted

in the blurring of some of its distinctive features.


Methodology
Morgan correctly notes that there are four

criteria employed in determining wisdom's influence in a

non-"wisdom" text. These are: (1) vocabulary, (2) theme/

motif, (3) form/style, and (4) references to wise men.1


Vocabulary Approach
The vocabulary approach has been one of the most

commonly-used methods for establishing wisdom's presence

in a text. While some have given long lists of "wisdom

vocabulary,"2 abuses of this method have resulted when

some have viewed these words as technical terms through

which--using a simplistic, mechanical, concordance-like

process--wisdom's influence is detected. One must be

careful to exclude the "common cultural stock."

____________________

1Donn F. Morgan, Wisdom in the Old Testament

Traditions, p. 68; idem, "Wisdom and the Prophets," p. 229;

and Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition, p. 71.



2H. Duesberg and I. Fransen, Les scribes inspires:

Introduction aux livres Sapientiaux de la Bible (Belgium:

Editions de Maredsous, 1966), pp. 934-35. They list 200

words (dabar, elohim, etc.). This list is obviously too

broad. Scott, The Way of Wisdom, pp. 76-77, lists about 70

words which he considers "characteristic vocabulary."
Alonso-Schokel correctly objects to a strict vocabulary

approach, suggesting that a text must embrace wisdom's

"structures and mentality as well."1

It was Whybray's contribution to examine closely

the weighting of vocabulary in the determination of

suspected wisdom texts. He gives numerous ground rules

for ascertaining the terminology of the "intellectual

tradition": (1) "it must be clearly established which

terms are characteristic of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes

and may thus properly be used as criteria"; (2) "only

words of central significance for the main concerns of

these books should be included"; and (3) there must be a

separation of words which are mainly confined to the

wisdom corpus and those which, while used extensively in

wisdom texts, are also found frequently elsewhere in

Scripture simply as a result of their being part of the

common cultural stock. Whybray further demonstrates his

semantic sensitivity to shifts in word meaning when he

notes that the meaning of a word may be genre-dependent,

to some extent. Thus, one must not only isolate the words

used by the wise, but also determine whether the meaning

is constant in the text being examined.2

Whybray's own analysis of wisdom vocabulary is the

____________________



1L. Alonso-Schokel, "Sapiential and Covenant

Themes in Genesis 2-3," in SAIW, p. 470.



2Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition, p. 75.

best found anywhere. He divides his list into four

perceptive categories: (l) "Words Occurring Only in

Proverbs, Job and/or Ecclesiastes" (e.g., hasar-leb,



'asel, sikelut, and tahbullot); (2) "Words Occurring

Frequently Both in Proverbs, Job and/or Ecclesiastes and

Also in Other Old Testament Traditions" (e.g., 'awen,

'enos, 'orah, 'asere, bin, da'at, derek, hebel, musar,

mezimma, ma'gal, masal, nabal, 'awla, netiba, sod, 'esa,

rason); (3) "Words Characteristic of Proverbs, Job and/or

Ecclesiastes, but Occurring Occasionally in Other Old

Testament Traditions" (e.g., 'ewil, 'iqqes, heqer, 'orma,

peti, skl, tebuna, tokahat); and (4) "Words Apparently

Exclusive to the Intellectual Tradition" (e.g., bina,



ba'ar, kesil, les, leqah, nabon, sakal, 'arum, tusiyya).

He especially highlights the root hkm as characteristic of

wisdom texts.1
Motif Approach
The common motif approach is quite frequently used

to demonstrate wisdom's presence in a text. Although

Ranston does not use his catalogue of ideas this way, he

does give what he considers to be recurrent wisdom thought

forms: (1) humanistic and universalistic outlook,

(2) primarily practical rather than abstract,

____________________

1Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition, pp. 124-42.

His overemphasis on hakam is revealed in the Psalms (vid.

p. 92).

(3) observations concerning man (individually,

psychologically, and socially) and nature, (4)

indifference to the cult, and (5) perceptions of problems

with divine providence.1 Following Mowinckel, Perdue

notes these motifs in wisdom: theodicy, retribution, and

the contrast between the righteous and wicked.2 Murphy

adds "the two ways" and "the fear of the Lord" themes as

well as an emphasis on conduct (diligence, responsibility,

avoiding evil women). To these could be appended the

viewing of torah as a source of delight and proper/

improper speech.3 Several observations may be made on the

motif approach: (1) the motif must be clearly and

concisely defined within the wisdom corpus itself, if it

is going to be used as a criterion; (2) it must be shown

that the idea being used to detect wisdom's presence is

not characteristic of other traditions; and (3) careful

scrutiny must be given as to the transformations which the

____________________

1Ranston, The Old Testament Wisdom Books and Their

Teaching, pp. 22-25.

2Perdue, Wisdom and Cult, pp. 262-64.

3Roland E. Murphy, "A Consideration of the

Classification,'Wisdom Psalms'," VTSup 9 (1963):160. Cf.

also Kenneth J. Kuntz, "The Canonical Wisdom Psalms of

Ancient Israel--Their Rhetorical, Thematic and Formal

Dimensions," in Rhetorical Criticism: Essays in Honor of

James Muilenburg, Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series,

no. 1, ed. J. J. Jackson and M. Kessler (Pittsburgh: The

Pickwick Press, 1974), pp. 186-222; also Kuntz, "The

Retribution Motif in Psalmic Wisdom," ZAW 89 (1977):

223-33, and Kaiser, "Wisdom Theology and the Centre of Old

Testament Theology," p. 133.

concepts will go through when they are interfaced with

historical, psalmic and prophetic genres.


Form Approach and Summary
While the forms of wisdom will be treated in

detail later, it may be noted here that common structures

are used to trigger the recognition of the wisdom

tradition. Numerous catalogues of forms have been

prepared and the following are most commonly recognized as

wisdom forms: (l) the 'asre formula, (2) numerical

sayings, (3) better sayings, (4) an address of a teacher/

father to a "son," (5) alphabetic acrostics, (6) the use

of similes and metaphors, (7) rhetorical questions,

(8) admonitions, and (9) riddles.1 Lindblom, in his

seminal article on the prophets, also adds the use of

proverbs/traditional sayings and parables.2 These will be

examined later.

Thus, four criteria--(1) vocabulary, (2) forms,

(3) themes, and (4) explicit reference to wise men--are

taken as indicators of wisdom influence. While none of

____________________

1Kuntz, "The Canonical Wisdom Psalms of Ancient

Israel," p. 191; Crenshaw, "Wisdom," p. 250; Scott, The



Way of Wisdom, p. 197; Morgan, Wisdom in the Old Testament

Traditions, p. 127; Perdue, Wisdom and Cult, pp. 263-64;

Murphy, Introduction to the Wisdom Literature of the Old



Testament, p. 41; and "A Consideration of the

Classification 'Wisdom Psalms,'" p. 165.



2Johannes Lindblom, "Wisdom in the Old Testament

Prophets," VTSup 3 (1969):201.

these by itself will be conclusive, the intersection of

any of these will strengthen the case. A brief survey of

works which attempt to validate wisdom's presence in the

canon will move diacanonically from the Law and the

historical sections, to the Psalms and Prophets.
Wisdom and the Pentateuch
The relationship between wisdom and torah has been

frequently discussed.1 Kline obviously reflects a lack of

sensitivity to wisdom, when he writes, "The central thesis

of the wisdom books is that wisdom begins with the fear of

Yahweh, which is to say that the way of wisdom is the way

of the covenant."2 Nel is more perceptive, viewing both

law and wisdom as mutually declarative of the order and

will of Yahweh.3 While the law and wisdom are explicitly

connected in Sirach (39:17b-20; 2:16; 19:20; 23:27;

24:23),4 some have consanguineously juxtaposed specific

legal stipulations and proverbial materials (Exod

____________________



1Jensen, The Use of tora by Isaiah, p. 15.

2Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical

Authority (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing

Co., 1972), p. 65.



3Nel, The Structure and Ethos, p. 95; cf. also

Scott, The Way of Wisdom, p. 17.



4Wolfgang Roth, "On the Gnomic-Discursive Wisdom

of Jesus Ben Sirach," Semeia 17-19 (1980):59-77; Fox,

"Aspects of the Religion of the Book of Proverbs," p. 69;

and Kaiser, "Wisdom Theology and the Centre of Old

Testament Theology," p. 136.

22:21-24; Deut 10:18; 24:17-22; Prov 15:25; and 23:10).1

Others have noted the common thread of "the fear of

Yahweh" (Lev 19:14, 32; 25:17, 43).2

Gemser early observed the connection between the

legal material and Proverbs, especially the proverbial

character of Exodus 23:8 (Deut 16:19; Prov 17:23) and its

condemnation of bribery. He also points to a parallel

about falsified weights (Lev 19:35 and Prov 11:1).3 The


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