PROVERBS 1–9

Theological context

There has been much discussion of how integral a religious and specifically Yahwistic dimension is to Proverbs 1–9. This involves both the figure of personified Wisdom and the references to Yahweh and the ‘fear of Yahweh’. Whybray argued (in 1965 and 1994a) that the literary history of Proverbs 1–9 involves stages of additions. The original ‘instruction’ material, characterized by the father/son mode of address and reconstructed largely with reference to Egyptian parallels, although definitively Israelite in its concerns, was then subjected to redaction. Whybray finds two distinct sets of additions, each made with a particular theological purpose in view. The first additions were made to the instructions, and the second to the first. The first layer of the secondary material was added to equate the ‘father's’ words with that of the figure of Wisdom. The second layer was to align Wisdom with Yahweh and to remind readers that the ultimate aim of teaching was to instill into pupils ‘the fear of Yahweh’. Both redactions were an attempt to reinterpret the original teachings in a more theological manner.

The ‘cutting and pasting’ method of procedure with texts has come under a good deal of criticism in recent times.