Another sidestep from the narrative this week as we look at the rest of the book of Proverbs. We read back in February of the book’s prologue, the ideological war between Lady Wisdom and the Harlot, Folly. Having established that Wisdom is the path to life and Folly, to death, these remaining chapters explore the best ‘pearls’ from Israel’s finest.

Proverbs is inspiring to its readers because it is real and down to earth. Life isn’t clear cut and the right path is rarely obvious, and Proverbs never pretends any different. This is the beauty of all the ‘Wisdom’ literature captured here in the Old Testament. Whether it’s Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs, truth is ambiguous and depends on the situation at hand. Decisions aren’t straightforward and, in the vein of King David’s legacy, though doing the ‘right’ thing is important, when things are a bit hazy, it’s the direction of the ‘heart’ that counts.

In that sense, Proverbs is not a blueprint for life. It is simply an assortment of sayings. There are, naturally, some common themes: hard work will pay off; being lazy can make you poor; those who do right will end up better off; talking too much is not always good for you; money can ruin you; and so on. But the assumption that wisdom is not found in a set of universal rules, but must be sought in each specific situation, is a powerful counter-force to the thrust of the Torah.

That’s not to say that the Israel’s Wisdom tradition opposes it’s Legal or Priestly institutions. Far from it! In the last post on Proverbs we noted how the ‘fear of the Lord’ of which the book is so concerned was precisely the ritual observance of Torah: the Law and the Cultus. So the beginning of wisdom (9:10) is keeping the Law and making the appropriate sacrifices at the appropriate times. What Proverbs does for Israel is not to undermine the Torah, but to transform it. Torah, the books of wordy legal stipulations, becomes torah, the way of the Covenant life, earthed and fuelled by dynamic and practical wisdom.

We are living now in a post-Torah faith. With the Law ‘fulfilled’ in Jesus, it is his teachings, not the Old Testament Covenant contract that should compel us. Yet, any set of teachings cannot be properly applied without the wisdom to see the particularities of different situations. When Jesus says that ‘anyone who is angry will be subject to judgement’ (Matt 5:22) there is clearly an anger that burns against injustice which is not. We see this in Jesus own life with his reaction at the Temple in Matt 21:12-13. Does this mean Jesus was wrong in his earlier statement? Had he gone too far? No. Jesus uses his words on anger in the Sermon on the Mount to challenge assumptions on the seriousness of anger. And he uses his actions at the Temple to challenge assumptions about the seriousness of injustice. Jesus demonstrates the wisdom to know what to say and when to say it; what to do and when to do it.

Proverbs contains so much wisdom that is still relevant and practical for today’s student of life. Thoughts on money, sex and power challenge and provoke as much now as ever. But Proverbs also inspires us to find our ‘torah’. What is the ‘way’ by which we live our lives? What guides us, inspires us, cajoles us?

No matter how much we talk the Bible up as a blueprint for life, it will never be that. It wasn’t written to be one and we can’t force it to take that role without seriously violating it. The simple – and to some, eternally frustrating – fact is that nobody and nothing will ever give us a clear and unquestionable road-map for how to live. We have to find our own path, knowing that we will have to give an account for it in the end.

Our ‘torah’, however, is not something we have to create on our own. That Jesus is the Wisdom of God, incarnate as a human, comforts and inspires us that we are neither alone nor without help. To find our path is done in constant dialogue with the scriptures (as we are doing now), with those we share community, with others who have gone before us and, of course, with the Spirit of Jesus, who will guide us into all wisdom (John 16:13).