This chapter ranges together the oldest proverbial material – i.e. the previously oral maxims that form the bedrock of the ‘proverb’ genre. These are to be found in the main sayings collection in 10:1-22:16, also in 24:23-34 and in the many variants in 25-9 and in the miscellany of animal sayings and lists in Proverbs 30:7-33. The role of all these sections in ethical guidance, itself not monochrome but characterized by difference and contradiction, is explored.

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