Chapter Six
The Proverb as a Literary Form
The Bible: An Aphoristic Book
A PROVERB OR APHORISM (I will use the terms interchangeably) is a concise,
memorable statement of truth. It is one of the dominant literary forms in the Bible
and is not confined to what is called Old Testament wisdom literature. The Bible
as a whole is the most aphoristic book in the world. The English poet Francis
Thompson, commenting on how the Bible influenced his writing, called the Bible
“a treasury of gnomic wisdom. I mean its richness in utterances of which one
could, as it were, chew the cud. This, of course, has long been recognised, and
Biblical sentences have passed into the proverbial wisdom of our country.”¹
Examples of Proverbs
In seeking to gain an understanding of the proverb as a literary form, we can best
begin by noting the characteristics of an individual proverb. I will generalize about
the form on the basis of the following five specimens, deliberately chosen from di-
verse parts of the Bible to show how widely the form appears in the Bible.
1.“He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; / nor he who loves
wealth, with gain” (Eccl. 5:10 RSV).
2.“The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, / shining ever
brighter till the full light of day” (Prov. 4:18).
3.“My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30).
4.“A man reaps what he sows” (Gal. 6:7).
5.“The tongue. . .is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body”(James
3:6).
Proverbs Are Striking and Memorable
The first thing that we notice about these specimens is that they are memorable.
When we first hear or read a proverb, we obviously do not know if we will remem-
ber it, but it has a striking effect on us at once, and we recognize that it is worthy
of memorization. The aim of a proverb is to make an insight permanent. A literary
scholar has theorized that
to epigrammatize an experience is to strip it down, to cut away irrelevance, to
eliminate local, specific, and descriptive detail, to reduce it to and fix it in its
most permanent and stable aspect, to sew it up for eternity.²
The proverb shares with other literary forms the desire to overcome by means of
arresting strangeness the cliché effect of ordinary discourse. To create an apho-
rism requires a skill with language that most people lack. It is, in short, a literary
gift, a way with words.
Proverbs Are Both Simple and Profound
A second excellence of proverbs is that they are both simple and profound. On the
one hand, they are glorious proof that the simple can be a form of beauty.
Proverbs are short and easily grasped. They strip down an experience to its
essence and omit everything extraneous. Yet they can penetrate life to its most
profound level, and we never get to the end of their application. For example, the
observation that “he who loves money will not be satisfied with money” is a
deceptively simple statement. It is actually a double comment about money: a per-
son is unsatisfied by money because (a) the appetite for money grows by indul-
gence and is therefore insatiable, and (b) material things do not satisfy perma-
nently and at the deepest level.
Proverbs Are Both Specific and General
Another paradoxical quality of proverbs is that they are both specific and general,
both particularized and universal. Notice all the particulars in the proverbs cited
above. They talk about money and path and light and yoke and sowing and reap-
ing and fire. Yet each of these proverbs covers a whole host of similar events.
Proverbs always express an observation about a general tendency in life, not about
a unique occurrence. Furthermore, a specific proverb often covers a whole cluster
of related experiences. The aphorism “What a person sows, that he will also reap”
applies to many areas of life. Proverbs thus follow a very basic literary principle:
their way of getting at the universal is through the particular.
Proverbs Are Often Poetic in Form
Another crucial fact about proverbs is that they are often poetic in form. Much of
the wisdom literature in the Bible is expressed in the form of parallelism. But re-
gardless of whether proverbs are in verse or prose, they frequently use the re-
sources of figurative language. Everything that I said about the poetic idiom in the
chapter on poetry applies to proverbs; indeed, proverbs could legitimately be in-
cluded among the types of biblical poetry.
Simile and metaphor are especially abundant in proverbs, as the specimens
cited above demonstrate. Whole chapters in the Book of Proverbs consist of com-
parisons. Makers of proverbs love to use one area of human experience or exter-
nal reality to cast light on another area. For example, all that is beautiful and posi-
tive about the godly life is pictured as the rising sun. The destructiveness of
speech is rendered metaphorically as a fire. Jesus’ great aphorism that his yoke is
easy and his burden light combines metaphor and paradox. All of this means that
the rules for interpreting figures of speech are a necessary part of interpreting
proverbs.
Proverbs Are Observations About Human Experience
Creators of proverbs are also truly literary in their ability to observe life. To write
literature of any type, a person must be a sensitive observer of the human scene.
This is exactly what the wisdom teachers of the Bible are. They are the
photographers of the Bible, says Robert Short in a book that is the best on the
subject.³ In Hebrew culture there were three main classes of religious leaders—
priests, prophets, and wise men. Jeremiah 18:18, referring to all three, attributes a
distinctive type of writing or discourse to each: law, word, and counsel respec-
tively. There is a crucial difference between law and prophecy on the one side and
proverbial wisdom on the other. Law and prophecy are God’s direct word to
people. The proverbs of wisdom teachers are wise human observations about
reality. They rarely are direct moral commands like the Ten Commandments.
Descriptive and Prescriptive Proverbs
By placing proverbs in the context of the Bible’s moral law, we can usually sense
at a glance whether a given proverb is descriptive or prescriptive. Unlike moral com-
mands, proverbs tend to state general principles to which there might be excep-
tions. Those who utter proverbs do not worry about possible exceptions (neither
do lyric poets); they trust people to use their common sense in recognizing that a
proverb need not cover every possible situation. The Hebrew mind tends to state
the general rule and not to worry about exceptions (as in the claim of Ps. 1 that the
godly person prospers in “whatever he does”).
Proverbs Are High Points of Human Insight
Proverbs are high points of human insight. To use a literary term, a proverb is a
moment of epiphany (insight, revelation). If proverbs appeared in a story or poem
(as they sometimes do), we would recognize them as summing up the main
thrust of the whole work. The modern story writer James Joyce once described a
moment of epiphany as the point in a story where a spiritual or intellectual eye ad-
justs its vision to an exact focus. A proverb is just such a moment of intellectual
focus. It masters a whole area of life by bringing it under the control of a verbal
focus. A proverb captures the clearest and most affecting moment, the point of
greatest light.
The Urge for Order
As a literary form, the proverb illustrates the human urge for order. Aphoristic
thinking enables us to master the complexity of life by bringing human experience
under the control of an observation that explains and unifies many similar experi-
ences. How many times have we not observed people whose compulsion was to
make money and acquire possessions, only to find themselves dissatisfied. The
insight that puts the many instances of this phenomenon into focus is the
proverb, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money.” Proverbs are a
way of organizing what we know to be true of life. In the words of Norman Perrin,
The essence of a proverbial saying is that it is based on observation of how
things are in the world. It is a flash of insight into the repeatable situations of
life in the world, and its aphoristic form not only represents insight but com-
pels it. . . . Naturally, in the context of a firm belief in God, the proverb comes
to express insight into the way things are, or should be, in the world ordered
by God and a challenge to behaviour that God will reward.⁴
Proverbs Are True to Human Experience
It pains me to see the biblical proverb belittled as a repository of truth simply be-
cause it does not have the prescriptive all-inclusiveness of a moral command. “A
maxim,” Coleridge correctly said, “is a conclusion upon observation of matters of
fact.”⁵ Proverbs are true in the same way a story or poem is true: they are true to
human experience and to reality. Proverbs express truths and experiences that are
continually being confirmed in our own lives or the lives of people around us.
Proverbs are timeless and never go out of date. The one unanswerable proof that
proverbs can be trusted to tell the truth is a long, hard look at what is going on
around us in the world.
Proverbs Belong to Real Life
This experiential truthfulness of proverbs is reinforced by the fact that the envi-
ronment in which a proverb truly lives is not a collection of proverbs but the
everyday situation of life where it applies. The individual proverb is a self-
contained unit. Its point of contact is not with the next proverb in a collection but
with the real-life situation it illuminates. This is well illustrated by the pronounce-
ment stories in the Gospels, where an aphorism of Jesus is recorded together with
the event or encounter that prompted the saying.
The Pervasiveness of Proverbs in the Bible
Where do we find proverbs in the Bible? Everywhere. They are concentrated in the
wisdom writings of the Old Testament, chiefly the books of Proverbs and Eccle-
siastes. But the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels are nearly as concentrated in their
use of aphorism. The New Testament Epistle of James is also largely aphoristic in
form.
Indeed, the Bible is such an aphoristic book that it is hard to find individual
parts of the Bible that do not contain proverbs. They appear in the brief stories of
the Bible: “Am I my brother’s keeper?’’ (Gen. 4:9). Naturally we find aphorisms
throughout the poetry of the Bible: “Taste and see that the LORD is good’’ (Ps.
34:8). The prophets are likewise aphoristic in style: “they will run and not grow
weary, / they will walk and not be faint’’ (Isa. 40:31). And the New Testament Epis-
tles frequently have the memorable, chiseled effect of aphorism: “So faith, hope,
love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love’’ (1 Cor. 13:13 RSV). The
aphoristic nature of the Bible is well attested by the large number of titles for
books and works of literature that have been taken from the Bible, and by the fre-
quency with which individual verses have been put on plaques.
An additional word needs to be said about the Old Testament wisdom books
of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. Here we find series of proverbs collected into small
anthologies. How can we best read and study these books?
THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES
The Quest for Meaning
The Book of Ecclesiastes, the most misunderstood book in the Bible, is skillfully
structured around two unifying patterns. One is the quest motif. As readers, we
accompany the speaker as he recalls his quest to find meaning in life. In recount-
ing this quest, he describes both the dead ends he pursued and the alternative to
that futility, namely, a God-centered life.
A Structure of Opposites
The other structural principle is a dialectical system of opposites. The writer alter-
nates between negative “under the sun” passages and positive “above the sun”
passages. This dialectical principle accounts for the contradictions the book
presents. When the writer describes the futility of life “under the sun” (that is, life
lived by purely human or earthly standards), he is not offering his final verdict on
life. In literary fashion, he is sharing his observations about how life should not be
lived.
The Positive Passages Throughout the Book
Balancing the negative sections are positive ones in which the writer portrays a
God-centered alternative to life under the sun. God and spiritual values are domi-
nant in these sections, and they transform the very aspects of life (e.g., work, eat-
ing, drinking) that are declared empty in the under-the-sun passages. It is untrue
that the Book of Ecclesiastes becomes positive only at the conclusion. The affir-
mations made at the end have already been repeatedly asserted in positive sec-
tions of the book (such as 2:24-26; 3:10-15; 5:1-7; and 5:18-20).⁶
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
The Book of Proverbs presents more serious difficulties for a literary approach.
There are some clusters of proverbs on a single topic, such as the passages on
the drunkard (23:29-35), the king (25:2-7), and the sluggard (26:13-16). Chapters
1-9 are also more unified than the rest of the book. They are a coherent section of
instruction unified by a common theme (wisdom), common images and char-
acters, and a unifying plot conflict between wisdom and folly.
A Topical Approach
Beyond these sections, though, the structure is miscellaneous and the unity
nonexistent. Two approaches to the collected proverbs are possible. One is a top-
ical approach. It is relatively easy to arrange the Book of Proverbs into various top-
ics (such as work, use of money, good and bad women, etc.). Once we have put
such proverbs into their topical “family,” we can meditate on the complementary
aspects of a single experience, much as we can turn a prism in the light to get var-
ious colors.
Reading by Chapters
The other approach is to read through a chapter as it stands. Such reading should
be slow, reflective, and imaginative. This is a good way to become familiar with
individual proverbs, so they will rise to our consciousness and lips when a real life
situation fits a given proverb. Reading by chapters, noting the wide range of phe-
nomena touched upon, is also true to the mixed nature of actual experience.
Reading Reflectively
Whatever approach we take, it is essential to respect the compression that is a
hallmark of the proverb as a literary form. A single proverb covers a whole cate-
gory of experiences. Instead of passing quickly from one proverb to the next, in
the process reducing each proverb to a cliché, we need to pause at each one,
