Compilations of quotations and of proverbs have a long history, with some significant differences. Dictionaries of quotations as we know them today are a more recent phenomenon, and belong in the area of popular reference. The full range of dictionaries of proverbs encompasses a scholarly approach to language analysis, as well as more popular productions. This chapter, focusing on collections available today, looks at what the form of such publications can tell us about the primary value of such a resource to readers, as well as what publishers and website originators believe readers want.

Chapter 8 looks at Samuel in the theological context of the rest of the Scriptures: the Former Prophets or Deuteronomistic History, Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Qohelet, and the New Testament.

This chapter begins by exploring the issue of Proverbs as wisdom literature and its context within that group of books, it looks at the distinctive forms and content of the book and at the various possible context(s) for different sections of the work. It also looks at the Solomonic attribution and at other attributions to different characters found in Proverbs and at questions of orality and literacy.

This chapter examines Shakespeare’s dramaturgical “cuing the past” through spoken directives to recall things preceding the play’s chronology. His ingenious staging of “the tug of memory” – grounded in traditional mnemotechnic oratorical tactics – elicits and guides the audience’s affective response to some specific aspect of a character’s backstory. Special attention is given to “invention” and “memory” from classical rhetoric (where the relationship of affect to emotion is shown to function analogously to that of invention to invented text), by way of illustrating how the appositive yet complementary tropes of “augmentation” and “abbreviation” in Merchant of Venice and Comedy of Errors, for example, can be used to unpack the rampant play of proverbs in Henry V (3.7). Shakespeare’s affective cueing of the past sets memory to work, tugging at what is to be recalled and yanking it center stage for all to see and then factor into their judgment of the character.

From Late Antiquity onward many Homeric verses and phrases were considered to have a proverbial value and as such were employed as independent witty sayings. While the use of these Homeric proverbs in Byzantine writings has yet to be thoroughly investigated, in the early sixteenth century these expressions were gathered in paroemiographical collections. These include Erasmus’ Adagia and Arsenios Apostolis’ Violarium, two works which seem to be interdependent in this respect. Apostolis copied many Homeric verses and their accompanying scholia into the margins of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, gr. 3058, with the intention to add another section to the four existing typologies (proverbs, maxims, apothegms and anecdotes). In doing so, he explored and exploited available sources, such as the Commentaries on Homer by Eustathios of Thessalonike. The criteria according to which Apostolis organized the proverbs, as well as his creation of a separate section on Homeric proverbial verses, were innovations in Greek literature. This chapter explores the textual relationship between Apostolis’ compilation and the long exegetical tradition on Homer. More particularly, it will demonstrate how Eustathios’ works were preserved and adapted to the expectations of a new era.

Tremper Longman begins the Companion by setting the stage for many of the chapters that follow. Of first importance is the fact that discussing ‘biblical wisdom literature’ is not as simple as it seems. For the category as such has been questioned, and, even among those scholars who agree to use the phrase, what it means and designates remains up for debate. Longman presents the various viewpoints in terms of the ‘traditional view’, reactions to it, and ‘the way forward’. Matters of genre, the grouping of biblical texts, and their social location or worldview arise, as do suspicions about how ‘wisdom literature’ came about within scholarship and a recent repudiation of what it has become. Longman’s way forward indicates that Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes do indeed have meaningful affinities, and that these texts can and should be studied together, as well as in relation to other OT texts.

Paul-Alain Beaulieu examines Mesopotamian Wisdom. While acknowledging that there is no native category of ‘Wisdom Literature’ in Mesopotamia, Beaulieu nonetheless finds it a helpful classification. Within this category are texts of several genres: we find disputations, which begin with a mythological introduction, progress to a verbal contest between non-human combatants, and conclude with the victor pronounced by a god. There are proverbs, found in collections and quoted in letters, as well as fables, often about animals. Instructions and admonitions transmit antediluvian wisdom to postdiluvian generations. Some texts reflect on the problem of theodicy, ruminating on the human-divine relationship and individual divine retribution, while others lament the futility of life and advocate a carpe diem attitude. School debates centralise learning and the scribal arts. These texts are linked by intertextual references and shared features, such as their frequent ascription to individual wise figures, assumption of the absolute and inscrutable power of the gods, and reflection on the human predicament.

Knut Heim examines the literary and historical contexts of wisdom literature, taking the book of Proverbs as a case study, and surveying the work of key scholars in the field. Beginning with literary context, he argues that the sayings are organised into ‘clusters’ through linguistic and thematic links with their neighbours, and that this context has hermeneutical significance. Particularly important is the placement of religious proverbs, which are well integrated with their surroundings. This calls into question the scholarly assumption that religious elements are a late addition to the book, and that wisdom was originally a ‘secular’ endeavour. Rather, elements like the ‘fear of the Lord’ were already embedded within the sayings collections by the time an editor added chapters 1–9. This has implications for the historical development of Proverbs and, more broadly, of wisdom in Israel.

In his chapter on Proverbs, Christopher Ansberry provides a refreshing introductory approach to the book, not least because he starts with the history of interpretation rather than letting thematic concerns dominate. He identifies five patterns within the history of the book’s interpretation, including a focus on character formation, debates about the nature of its ‘wisdom’ and place in the canon, interest in its reception via matters of date and authorship, the discovery of comparative ancient Near Eastern material, and current, expanding interdisciplinary approaches to the book. A section on the fundamental nature of the book takes on matters of form, genre, poetic features, and the idea of a ‘collection’, whilst granting admiration rather than suspicion to the complexities of the book’s sayings. Likewise, the structure of Proverbs, though containing many parts, comes together into a coherent whole, an ‘anthology’, to which each piece contributes. Ansberry concludes by proposing four ‘dominant’ themes in the book: the fear of the Lord; wisdom; moral order and created order; retribution and reward.

Moving into the wider world of the ancient Near East, Michael Fox and Suzanna R. Millar examine Egyptian wisdom literature. They begin with an overview of extant examples from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period, and then turn to some major themes and issues. They consider Ma’at (the regulating force of truth/justice), character development (particularly as expressed through polar character types), pedagogy (including the debate about who is capable of learning), and transmission (through the generations in oral and written forms). The second half of the chapter assesses some commonly proposed examples of Egyptian influence on biblical wisdom literature, namely the influence of Amenemope on Prov 22:17–23:11 and elsewhere in Proverbs, Egyptian parallels to Proverbs 8, Egyptian parallels to Prov 23:12–24:22, an alleged precursor to Job 38–39 in Egyptian onomastica, and connections between Ben Sira and the Demotic Instruction Phibis.

Noting the debates around whether ‘wisdom’ constitutes a genre, Suzanna R. Millar instead studies the multiple smaller genres of which wisdom literature consists. Texts use (and sometimes intentionally misuse) genres to communicate with readers, providing them with conventions for interpretation and expectations about content. Surveying Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Solomon, Millar discerns four clusters of genres, grouped according to their communicative purpose. Some genres intend to instruct their users (sayings, instructions, diatribe, protreptic, and didactic narratives); others engage in reasoning (reflections and wisdom dialogues). These genres are not unexpected in wisdom literature, but the next are more familiar from other biblical corpora: some genres offer praise (either to wisdom, people of God), and others enunciate complaints (laments and legal complaints). These multiple genres combine and interact in complex ways within the wisdom book

With his ‘Solomonic Connection’, David Firth observes the man Solomon as he appears in Kings and Chronicles. Solomon is ‘paradigmatic’ for understanding wisdom in both of these books and yet he is not treated identically therein. Kings and Chronicles offer different portraits of the exceedingly wise king, whether that be his foundational role for wisdom or his problematic relationship with it. Matters of the temple, Solomon’s behaviour, torah, and the very conception of wisdom itself all have a place in biblical presentations of Solomon. Firth looks closely at 1 Kings 1–11 and 2 Chronicles 1–9 with a literary and theological reading that does not let one account determine the other or allow the Solomonic portraits in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to have all of the attention.

Arthur Jan Keefer discusses the relationship of wisdom literature and virtue ethics. Posing questions of both method and substance, the chapter proposes how interpreters might make use of virtue theories for reading biblical wisdom literature. Of foremost importance are precise definitions for concepts of ‘virtue’, a selection of particular texts that set out an understanding of virtue, and an appreciation of traditional methods of biblical interpretation, all of which guards against vague conclusions and artificial comparison. Within the last decade, several scholars have pioneered the study of virtue ethics and wisdom literature, most notably through Proverbs and Job. Keefer presents this work and then suggests some inroads for similar studies of Ecclesiastes and Ben Sira, which have received less attention with respect to virtue. Lastly, he considers how the possibilities of virtue within each of these books link up with notions of ‘the good’ and a teleological orientation for ethics.

The contribution by Peter T. H. Hatton is dedicated entirely to conceptions of reward and retribution in the wisdom literature. He considers how well-placed and sometimes misplaced the paradigm can be, namely that wickedness brings retribution and righteousness brings reward. Such doctrines, he says, remain ‘key claims of a dominant interpretive tradition’ and have consequently formed a ‘pejorative paradigm’ that leaves the book of Proverbs out of favour in comparison to more nuanced books of the OT. The seminal work of 1955 by Klaus Koch – ‘Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Tesament?’ (Is there a Dogma of Retribution in the Old Testament?) – receives special attention, as do subsequent, critical responses to it. Hatton suggests that the moral mechanism of act-consequence is just not that predictable and that in Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes the paradigm is principally relational. For ‘reward’ and ‘retribution’ are not mechanical but are rather conditioned by one’s relationship with the Lord.

Katharine Dell’s contribution explores the question whether there is a distinctive set of theological ideas for the three key wisdom books – Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. After a brief survey of scholarship on this debate over the last century and a half, key themes that the books have in common are explored, with salient examples – the doctrine of retribution; the fear of the Lord; the figure of Wisdom and the attainment of wisdom; the theme of creation; communication and life and death. Although considerable commonality is found, there is also a discovery of difference and of interlinking with other books in the canon. The themes themselves are not confined to these ‘wisdom’ books, even though they characterize them accompanied by an essential didactic approach.

William P. Brown explores the pedagogy of the wisdom literature. He argues that wisdom is dynamic as it is imparted between individuals, and that it finds its telos in human character development. This dynamic pedagogy is versatile. Sometimes (especially Proverbs 1–9), it manifests itself in rebuke, pronounced hierarchically in the matrix of patriarchal authority. Rebuke, though, can also be dialogic; in Proverbs, the wise also impart it amongst themselves. Both models of rebuke are evident in Job, where Job and his friends reciprocally rebuke each other, and God hierarchically rebukes Job. God’s rebuke, though, is not simply belittling, rather eliciting wonder through the pedagogy of the Master Poet. These texts also teach through testimony – Qohelet invokes his personal observations and investigations, and Wisdom herself testifies to her role in creation (Proverbs 8). Here, Wisdom comes alongside readers as a playing child, and welcomes them as a gracious host. Finally, proverbs have pedagogical power, revelling in comparison, paradox, irony, and metaphor.