What Is the Book of Proverbs About?

If you have thought that Proverbs is simply a collection of moral tidbits, you might be surprised to learn that it is actually the story of a son. Let me show you how.

The book opens like this:

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:
To know wisdom and instruction…
(Proverbs 1:1–2)

So the book of Proverbs is about knowing wisdom. But not in an abstract sense, as if it were a list of wise sayings. The author has designed it as the story of a father teaching wisdom to his son. And he teaches him in stages: first basic wisdom, then intermediate, then advanced.

Wisdom Is a Skill

The Hebrew word for wisdom, chokmah, could also be translated “skill,” and elsewhere in the Bible that is exactly how it is used. In Exodus, the craftsmen who design and build the Tabernacle are filled with wisdom. They are given skill in artistic designs (Exodus 31:3–5; 35:31–35).

Every craft and every area of knowledge has its own skill. There is a skill of business and a skill of marketing, and each has to be learned and mastered. But what if you want to be good at life? That is what Proverbs is about. That is the skill the father teaches his son.

Seven Lessons

He teaches it in seven lessons. The book is organized into seven sections, arranged like this:

Notice the two large blocks of Solomon’s wisdom on either side of the center.

Where the Training Ends

In the first section, the father tells his son what will happen at the end of this pursuit of skillful living. Once we make it through all of his training, what will we have?

We will have understanding and insight. We will know righteousness, justice, and equity. We will be able to understand proverbs and riddles. In short, we will have wisdom. And the place where all of it starts is the fear of the Lord (1:7).

Ten Lessons and Two Ladies

In the second section, the father, Solomon, gives ten lessons to his son. Before we get to the meat of wisdom, we have to learn why this skill of living is worth pursuing at all. We are enticed into a life of wisdom. What do we get out of it?

Ten lessons is a beautiful allusion to the Ten Commandments. Just as the commandments were the moral foundation of Israel’s life, these ten lessons are the foundation of wisdom.

Then something surprising happens in the middle of these speeches. As the father instructs his son on the importance of wisdom, Wisdom herself enters the story. She comes in at an unexpected time, and in an unexpected place.

We would expect her to show up at home, since that is presumably where a father teaches his son. Instead she appears in the streets, in the markets, at the gates of the city (1:20–21; 8:1–3). She shows up outside the home, in public places. We will see why later.

After Lady Wisdom appears, we meet one more character: another lady, but this time an antagonist, Lady Folly. Both women have houses, and Wisdom is building hers. “Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars” (9:1). A house with seven pillars is an elegant allusion to the book of Proverbs itself, with its seven sections. When the book is finished, Wisdom’s house will be built.

So the father sets two options before his son, two women, and the son must choose the right one.

Basic Wisdom: The Antithetical Proverb

After the ten lessons, we arrive at wisdom itself: the proverbs of Solomon, beginning in chapter 10. This first collection covers basic and intermediate wisdom, and its main literary form is the antithetical proverb.

Here is the first proverb in the section:

A wise son makes a glad father,
but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
(Proverbs 10:1)

You have two things, a wise son and a foolish son. They stand in opposition, and they are contrasted by who they are and the effect they have on others.

This is the main literary form of the section. And in this foundational section, the main places and categories of life are all covered: wealth and wisdom, virtues and vices, different kinds of people. The full range of skillful living is introduced.

The Center: Out into the World

After this first section, we reach the center of the book. And surprisingly, we get a new teacher. Or maybe not a new teacher, we can’t be sure. All we know about him is a quality: he is wise. The body of this section is thirty sayings, the words of the wise (22:20).

We also get a new location. In the first section the father was teaching his son, presumably at home. Here we are taught what to do at the gate (22:22; 24:7), in the field (23:10; 24:27, 30), and before kings (22:29; 23:1), presumably some other king than the one at home. We are taught about places outside, out in the world.

Now we can start to see how the author is building the son’s progression. We started in the home, and now we have moved outside. Remember where Lady Wisdom first appeared: out in public, at the gate, just like in this section.

At the beginning of the grand story, not of Proverbs but of the whole Bible, man was given the job of going out into the world to rule and subdue it like a wise king (Genesis 1:28). So at the heart of this book, and at the heart of wisdom, is learning to be skillful out in those places.

Coming Home: Advanced Wisdom

After the thirty sayings, we come home. The next section opens with the words “proverbs of Solomon,” so we get another collection of Solomon’s proverbs. But it is not quite the same home. Here is the full introduction:

These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.
(Proverbs 25:1)

When we come home, our father isn’t here. Something has developed. We started at home, went out into the world, and when we came back our father was gone. His words are here, but we are one step removed from him.

There is a progression in the content too. Here is the first proverb of this second Solomon section:

It is the glory of God to conceal things,
but the glory of kings is to search things out.
(Proverbs 25:2)

Compare that to the first proverb of the first Solomon section: “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.” There we were told that if you are wise you will make your father glad, and if you are foolish you will bring sorrow. Here we are told that God hides things and it is your job to find them.

That is much more complex. In this section we have moved on to advanced wisdom.

Notice something else. The first Solomon section speaks about a son. This one speaks about what a king should do. We started at home, went away, came back, and now we are being instructed in how to be a king. Our father isn’t here anymore, because this is advanced wisdom. And as the wisdom advances, so do the literary forms. They grow more complex, with more analogies, similes, and metaphors.

Teachers We Don’t Know

The last two sections of Proverbs bring two more new teachers: Agur and Lemuel. We know nothing about either of them. To understand why, we have to look at how the author has arranged the book’s teachers.

We started at home with our father and slowly moved out to people we know less and less, until at the end of the book we meet two teachers we know nothing about. The author designed the book this way so that it mirrors life.

Think about how life works. When you are a baby, nearly everything that is put into you comes from your parents. As you grow older, little by little, friends and teachers enter the picture. Your parents’ share of your life decreases while theirs increases, until there is a point of inversion. Eventually you leave home and start learning from people who may have grown up in a completely different part of the world, with completely different practices.

Proverbs mirrors this, moving from the people closest to us to people who are far away and unknown. It is built this way so that we would learn to discern wisdom from folly at each of these stages. We don’t want to be caught off guard. We want to become skillful in each of these places, not unskillful and foolish.

From Proverbs to Oracles

There is more. These last two sections, unexpectedly, are not called proverbs. They are called oracles (30:1; 31:1).

In the Bible, oracles are normally what prophets speak, the very words of God. It is unexpected because the book announced itself at the start as the proverbs of Solomon. But when we get to the end, these aren’t proverbs. They are oracles.

So what is the author doing? He is teaching us that if we go through this whole master class in skillful living and take it all in, then in the end we will be able to speak oracles. That will be the quality of our speech: something akin to the very words of God. That is the kind of skill this book produces.

The Final Surprise

In the last, climactic section, the words of King Lemuel, the author has one more surprise. The whole book has been about a father, Solomon, teaching wisdom to his son. So we would expect one final, climactic lesson about a wise son. Instead, most of the chapter is about a wise woman (31:10–31).

Remember back at the beginning of the book, when Lady Wisdom showed up. She appeared at the beginning, and here at the end she appears again. And just as at the beginning, she is building her house.

Nowhere in this final chapter do we see the other lady, our antagonist, Lady Folly. Why? Because the son has chosen wisely. He has become wise. At the end we are given this emblem of Wisdom herself, and the son who has lived skillfully receives Wisdom herself.

And that, my friends, is why the Bible is art.