The Hebrew term for “wisdom,” ḥokmâ, occurs in various forms more than 300 times in the Old Testament, over half of which occur in Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. These three books, along with the deuterocanonical works of Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon, comprise the major corpus of what has been conventionally called the “wisdom literature” of ancient Israel. Both the term “wisdom” and the genre of material constituting “wisdom literature” point to salient characteristics that distinguish the preoccupations of Israel's sages. Along with prophets and priests (cf. Jer 18:18; Ezek 7:26), the sages devoted themselves to acquiring, understanding, and teaching fundamental truths about God, world, and humankind. Unlike their counterparts in this common endeavor, Israel's sages set their compass not to God's revealed commandments (Law or Torah) or to God's prescriptions for embodying them in ritual acts but instead to the pragmatic quest for knowledge through rational inquiry and human reason. Refusing to abandon reason for faith, they believed that God had created a world in which the wise, through disciplined study of observable phenomena, could discern and disseminate a way of living in consonance with the justice and righteousness on which God's “very good” creation (Gen 1:31) depended. Although the sages conceded the limitations of the human quest for the wisdom that God alone possesses (cf. Prov 19:21, 21:30; Job 28:12–13; Eccl 8:16–17), they believed that the quest was worth the effort.

As the sage who composed the “Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach” discerned, those who ponder the “great teachings … given to us through the Law and Prophets should praise Israel for instruction and wisdom” (Sir, prologue). Those who would be wise, the sage continues, must learn to be “at home with the obscurities” of life in relation to God (Sir 39:3).

PROVERBS: “THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM”

The final form of Proverbs, with all but one of the major text units clearly introduced by a title or superscription, provides an instructive entry into four major interpretive issues: (1) composition history, (2) literary forms, (3) social/historical context, and (4) thematic coherence.