Proverbs 2.1-22 : Becoming wise

AJM Holy Trinity January 2003

Introduction

Good morning. We’re continuing our series from the book of Proverbs, and today we’re looking at how to become wise. I feel a bit like those people on the radio programme, ‘you have 25 minutes on becoming wise, starting: now!’. Well, I spent ages thinking about it and I decided to begin by introducing you to a friend of mine.

This is him. He’s called Socrates. I bought him on the Isle of Skye about 25 years ago, and he’s lived in my study ever since. Socrates is named after a man who was born near Athens in the 5^th century BC. He is one of the most famous philosophers who have ever existed. He is known all over the world for his wisdom - even, as you can see, on the isle of Skye. None of his writings survive, but his teachings still affect your daily life. Does anyone know the name of his best pupil? It was Plato. And it has been said that the whole of western philosophy is just a footnote to the works of Plato.

Now, I can reveal to you that Socrates has a twin. I can’t introduce you to his twin because he belongs to my brother, who bought him at the same time. But I can tell you his name. Socrates’ twin is called Confucius. My brother is an Oxford academic, and I expect Confucius is still assisting him in his search for wisdom just as Socrates assists me. Confucius was born in the 6^th century BC in China. He too was a great teacher, and his wisdom dominated Chinese philosophy for the next 2500 years. Like Socrates, we’ve all heard of Confucius.

Now, you’re laughing, but let me ask you this. What do you think was so special about Socrates and Confucius? Why do they stand out as the foremost teachers of wisdom in the two great civilisations of Greece and China? In what did their wisdom consist? What marked them out?

Well, according to those who know about these things, the genius of both Socrates and Confucius lay in the fact that they understood that wisdom is not primarily about how much you know. For Socrates, there is a big difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is about facts. It’s about knowing things in your head. Wisdom, on the other hand, is not about what you know but about how you apply what you know; it’s about how you live. In other words, wisdom has an ethical or moral dimension. It’s a practical subject. Confucius came to the same conclusion by a different route. He also taught that wisdom is about understanding the difference between right and wrong. Wisdom is therefore nothing to do with IQ. It’s a practical discipline.

Now although both Socrates and Confucius have become household names for their wisdom, their lives didn’t actually go all that well. Socrates made so many enemies that he ended up sentenced to death by poisoning. Confucius became an itinerant teacher, ignored in his own city and unable to make an impression elsewhere. He died a disappointed man, knowing he had the answers but unable to convince others to listen to him.

What about other famous teachers of wisdom? Did they fare any better? If wisdom is a practical discipline, it ought to work, oughtn’t it.

Let me introduce you to a third man. This is Solomon.

Solomon lived in the 10^th century BC. He was the king of Israel, and in contrast to Socrates and Confucius his life was one long success story. He extended the kingdom, amassed great wealth, rebuilt the temple and a magnificent palace, married the daughter of the king of Egypt, excelled in scholarship and became the ancestor of Jesus. And in the course of all that, this is the reputation he gained (1 Kings 4):

God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than anyone else.. and his fame spread throughout all the surrounding nations. He composed 3000 proverbs; and his songs numbered a thousand and five… People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

So here we have a third wise man, who happens to be credited with the writing of this very book of Proverbs. So the question is, why did Solomon prosper when Socrates and Confucius did not? What was the secret of his success? Well, I think it’s this. Socrates and Confucius had understood that there is an ethical dimension to wisdom which had not been there before. A kind of second dimension. But Solomon saw that true wisdom has yet another dimension, a third dimension. Wisdom is not just ethical but spiritual. And it was in pursuing this dimension that Solomon acquired his wisdom. This is 1 Kings 3:

And God said, ‘Ask what I should give you’. And Solomon said, ‘You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David.. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in.. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.’... It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honour all your life.

So, wisdom is not just intellectual, or even just ethical. It’s spiritual. Wisdom involves not just your head but your whole being. It’s not about acquiring knowledge, or even just about translating what you know into practical living; it’s about your relationship with God. It will include knowledge and ethics, but for Solomon that isn’t where it starts. Where it starts is with God. For Solomon, wisdom goes one step further back into reality. And for Solomon, the proof of the pudding was in the eating.

The School of Wisdom

Well, Solomon started with a prayer, and he received his wisdom. But perhaps most people require a little more input than that. So beginning with Solomon, a school of wisdom developed in Israel. It started at the court, and it had a curriculum aimed at training young men for a successful career in the service of the state. Gradually it seems to have broadened to encompass all areas of life. The book of Proverbs, shaped and added to by later teachers, took on the function of a kind of course text book designed to teach young people for life. It contains a variety of forms - proverbs, poems, sayings, comparisons, observations, fables. I think it’s important to notice that it isn’t arranged as we would arrange a text book, in a nice logical sequence. It scatters its subjects all over the place, repeating itself and doubling back on itself continuously. Socrates would have had a fit. But I think that the first thing we need to grasp is that the form is part of the message. This textbook is not aimed just at the mind. The teachers who put it all together didn’t want to make it into an easy academic package. They didn’t want to impart information that you could churn out in an exam. They wanted to appeal to their students’ emotions and imaginations as well as their minds, for it turns out that becoming wise isn’t about absorbing a body of knowledge. Perhaps it can’t be systematically learnt at all; perhaps it has to be caught.

Proverbs chapter 2

So I invite you to imagine the scene. It’s the first day of term. You are young, you’ve got a grant, and you have enrolled in a school of wisdom. It’s your first lecture, and after an introductory warning in chapter 1 the teacher (let’s call him Dr Solomon) sets out to give you an overview of the syllabus. We find it in chapter 2.

Chapter 2 is written as a single unit. It’s a poem in six stanzas, containing 22 lines, which is the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. What I want to do today is not to analyse the poem but to read it in the light of the question we have before us : how to become wise.

Becoming wise : your attitude

Let’s look at verses 1-4 and ask, what is the attitude I need if I am to become wise? Well, in this first stanza of Solomon’s poem 2 words stand out. The first is in verse 1 : receive. If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding... It seems that wisdom is not a characteristic you are born with. In order to become wise, you must be willing to receive from others, to listen and learn to those with more experience. The starting point for the acquisition of wisdom is an admission of ignorance. The first step in becoming wise is to realise that you aren’t.

Well, what do we think about that. If we’re honest, it goes against the grain a bit, doesn’t it. Most of us feel a little uncomfortable at the thought of admitting we are ignorant. Most people prefer to work out a life strategy based on getting qualifications and seeking recognition. Let’s just take a moment to see whether that works.

When I was a student I had a friend called Anne. Anne had a first degree, and a Master’s degree. She was now spending 3 years writing a thesis on the basis of which she hoped to get a PhD. What was her topic? The use of the definite article in the Old French epic. Fascinating; but not a way of becoming wise in any sense that Solomon would have recognised. Anne got her Phd and went on to become a librarian. She was a lovely person, but at the time I knew her, her view of life was rather, well, shall we say, narrow. Ultimately that’s why I gave up the academic life. I got my PhD too. But I didn’t want to spend my life getting to know everything about nothing. Medieval Italian literature, or the Old French epic, or land use in the 18^th century, or the properties of polymers, are all fascinating topics of study. Qualifications in these and other subjects are useful and necessary; but they bring knowledge and not wisdom, and the two are not to be confused.

Other people spot this and abandon the ivory towers for the pursuit of worldly success. A second life strategy is to seek recognition. I had another friend called Mark. Mark was studying engineering when I was studying literature. Alison, tell me about Machiavelli, he said one day. I was dead impressed. An engineer who wanted to know about Machiavelli! So I did. He listened carefully and attentively. Then I asked, why do you want to know? Oh, he said, so that I can impress people at parties! Mark has impressed a lot of people since then, and he now has a top city job and a high income, and keeps his family in a style to which I am not accustomed. But although Mark is very good company, particularly at parties, he is no wiser than Anne, and successful though he is, I would not say that his life was characterised by wisdom. Success is not the same.

So, step number one in becoming wise is to adopt the right attitude, an attitude of humility. We saw that Solomon began his career by telling God he needed help because he didn’t have the faintest idea how to be a king. Agur, another contributor to the book of Proverbs, describes himself like this: Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom (30.2-3). Confucius protested in his Analects that he had merely passed on what was taught to him, and had made no original contribution of his own. All these sages seem to have one thing in common: they start from a position of confessed ignorance, and look to learn from others.

Let’s move on. The second word which stands out in this first stanza comes in verse 4 : search. Cry out for insight, raise your voice for understanding, seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures. Dr Solomon warms to his theme. You need the determination to search for what you haven’t got, because it won’t come easy. Don’t just sit there and hope wisdom will come! Be proactive! Cry out, raise your voice, seek, search! None of my university lecturers spoke like this. But then, they were trying to educate my mind, whereas Dr Solomon is trying to fire my imagination. Wisdom isn’t just a duty; it’s a delight, he suggests. So seek it like silver or like hidden treasure, for in it lies the secret of life. Jesus would use the same images when urging his hearers to seek the kingdom of heaven. Proverbs is packed with enticing imagery of this kind. Eat wisdom like honey, it says in chapter 24 verses 13-14, for the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste, and wisdom is sweet to your soul. I once saw a TV programme about a remote African tribe who live in the forest and eat what they can find there. Their choicest delicacy is honey, and they climb 50 foot tree trunks barefoot with a rope and a basket, risking falls and putting up with stings, in order to get the honeycomb from the bees’ nest. That’s the effort and reward of seeking wisdom. Often in Proverbs Wisdom is compared to a woman of great charm and beauty; she lives in a house with seven pillars and invites you to her table laden with food and appointed with fine wines (chapter 9). It’s rather like those ads selling cars and bikes, with pictures of beautiful women draped over them - let’s face it, the audience here is male! Choose her, and not her sister whose charms are on easy offer, described here in verses 16-19, for she will lead you down a slippery slope to destruction.

So, if you want to become wise, start by asking yourself a question: do you have a thirst to learn, or would you rather get by on what you know already? Do you have the patience to dig for the treasure, to climb the tree for the honey? Or would you rather relax, go with the flow, and follow the siren voices of the world we live in?

Becoming wise : your sources

So far, so good. Dr Solomon began his lecture by inviting you to adopt the attitude you need to become wise. You must be ready to receive and ready to search.

Now he moves on to his second point. His second point is found in the second stanza of the poem, verses 5-8. He progresses naturally from the need to search to the need to know where to search. What is the source of this wisdom? And now he is going to introduce you to his own particular insight. Verse 5: then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity.

This is Solomon’s insight: wisdom can be found only in the context of a relationship with God. And if there is one refrain which echoes in different variations through the whole of the book of Proverbs, it’s this : the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (9.10). It makes sense if wisdom is not about human knowledge but a tool for life - for life comes from God, and to seek wisdom is therefore to seek God himself. Wisdom is not intellectual but spiritual. Wisdom is part of the fabric of reality itself. She has been there since the beginning of time. According to chapter 8, verses 20-31, Wisdom was the first thing God created; according to chapter 3, verses 19-20, it was by Wisdom that he founded the earth and the heavens. Wisdom, in Solomon’s teaching, plays a role in creation akin to that ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Listen again to Agur, in chapter 30:

I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know!

How is wisdom gained and expressed? Only in words, I suppose. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John 1.1-4). So what is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know…

OK, wisdom is spiritual, and to become wise we must look to God. That’s all very well, but what does it mean in practice? Well, I’m sitting here on the back row of Dr Solomon’s lecture theatre, and three different approaches occur to me.

1. An Indian approach

I know that our western way of life is very rational and materialistic. I also know that for other peoples this is not so. The Hindu, for example, has a much more spiritual approach to life than we do. And the Hindu believes that once near the beginning of time there was a conflict between the gods and demons. During this conflict a drop of stuff called amrit, the nectar of immortality, fell into the water where the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers meet. And so every so often 15 million Hindus gather at this point, believing that if they bathe in the waters they will receive enlightenment. Perhaps that is where we can find wisdom.

2. Eve

But then again, looking at it realistically, perhaps most of us in the UK aren’t going to go that way. So let’s look at our own sacred text, the Bible, and let’s begin at the beginning. At the beginning we find Eve. Eve, together with Adam, knew God personally. Every day, in the cool of the day, God walked with them in the garden. Eve and Adam had personal access to the wisdom which made the universe. And yet it seems that wasn’t enough. In the middle of the garden stood a tree, a tree which brought knowledge of good and evil. It was out of bounds. But the book of Genesis says, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (3.6). Eve decided that wisdom was a DIY job, to be found not in God but despite God. She hasn’t really had a very good press since then, so perhaps we won’t go that way either.

3. Job

Let’s pursue a third thought. Maybe of all the characters in the Bible, the one who tried the hardest to achieve wisdom was Job. Job’s life wasn’t like Eve’s. It had already gone spectacularly wrong, and Job was trying to make sense of it all. What was the secret of prosperity and adversity, he asked? Plenty of people thought they knew, and told him. He listened patiently. But eventually this was his conclusion. It was similar to Agur’s:

But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth; it cannot be found in the land of the living. The deep says, it is not in me; the sea says, it is not with me. It cannot be bought with the finest gold, nor can its price be weighed in silver… Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell? It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds of the air…God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. When he established the force of the wind and measured out the waters, when he made a decree for the rain and a path for the thunderstorm, then he looked at wisdom and appraised it; he confirmed it and tested it. And he said to man: the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding. (Job 28.12-28)

So what would Dr Solomon have us do to find this wisdom which has its source in God? Well, you can think of ways as well as I can.

Wisdom is found in the Bible

Wisdom is in the Word of God, which is made available to us in the Bible. We just have to work out ways of getting it out. Once, a long time ago, I decided I really did want to get the juice out of Proverbs, but I felt I couldn’t take it on board when it was so badly organised. I decided that if Solomon’s publisher couldn’t get his act together, I’d better do the job for him. So I photocopied the whole thing, got a pair of scissors, cut it up and spread it all over the bedroom carpet. I then spent a happy couple of days rearranging all the bits of paper into some kind of logical order, and sticking them into a notebook under headings. Here it is, and 14 years later you are getting the results in the form of a sermon series. It was fun. So keep getting stuck into the word of God. Choose the bits that grab you – there’s something in there for everyone. Cut it up. Commit it to memory. Underline it. You can do whatever you like with it - as long as you do something with it!

Wisdom is learned from others

What else can we do? Well, we can take seriously Dr Solomon’s injunction to receive from other people. We can learn from those with more experience, listening to their thoughts and seeking their advice. There’s lots about that in Proverbs. And we can read books by wise and godly writers; much more fun I find than watching the telly. I read books all the time, making notes on them so I don’t forget what I’ve learnt from them. We live in a telly culture not a book culture; but we don’t have to, it’s only a matter of habit.

Wisdom is gained through prayer

Then we can do what Eve should have carried on doing, and talk with God in prayer, for that is how he speaks to us. As you pray, ask him to make you wise; for wisdom is a spiritual gift, listed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 along with the other gifts of the Spirit. We can take encouragement from James, who wrote, if any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. (James 1.5). Wisdom is open to all. You just have to know where to look.

Becoming wise : your decisions

Well, suppose you do all that, what will happen? If we remember that wisdom is practical, then there should be a practical outcome. And this is Dr Solomon’s final topic for today. If you look at the rest of the chapter, you will notice this: the words ‘way’ and ‘path’ are sounded no fewer than 12 times in 22 verses. It’s a reminder to us that wisdom is not about knowledge but about knowing how to live. It’s practical. It requires a certain attitude, it is found in a single source, and it has a specific outcome. It’s as practical as walking along one path or another one, a narrow one as opposed to a broad one, as Jesus might have said. That’s why the first Christians were known as followers of the Way.

So ultimately, wisdom turns out to be about choice. It’s about the decisions you make. Dr Solomon offers you two paths. Stanzas two and three of this poem describe the way that leads to life. Stanzas four and five describe the way that leads to death. We can summarise them like this: