Biblical Wisdom

​Those of you who have been reading my blogs over time—there are literally hundreds of them available without charge at my author’s website, www.reynoldruslan.com—know that wisdom is a frequent theme of mine. This makes sense since I’ve written five or six books on the subject. This is however the first time where I’ll talk about wisdom in the Bible, above all in the Old Testament. At another time I’ll follow this blog up with wisdom as found in the New Testament. I’m now reading through both testaments for the third time...

The first time was as a Lutheran, where my late wife and I both participated in and were graduated from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s three-year Bethel Bible Program. In the first two years we read and discussed the Old Testament, in the Third the New. More recently, as an Episcopalian, I completed the national lay-ministry program called Education for Ministry prepared and offered by the Episcopal seminary at the University of the South. This time we spent the first two of the four years reading the Bible: Year One the Old Testament and Year Two the New. Now, 2024-25 I am part of a small group at our Episcopal church who are reading and discussing the Bible together in a year. What an interesting sequence: three years, then two years, then one.
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Although advice on wisdom for living is found throughout the Old and New Testaments, it is most explicitly featured in the Book of Proverbs. The theme seems to be summed up in Proverbs 9:10 and 1:7: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom….” Our Lutheran pastor explained that a better translation than “fear” would be “awe,” but the original term in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures strikes me as fitting enough. If you want to have a long, happy life, the various pieces of advice seem to say, keep on the straight-and-narrow, follow the behavioral guidelines God gave to Moses, and above all don’t do any of the bad things forbidden in the Ten Commandments and elsewhere in Scripture. Here are a few illustrative lines from Proverbs.

Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget, nor/turn away/from the/words of my mouth./ Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;/love her, and she will guard you. (Proverbs 4:5-6)

Keep straight the path of your feet,/and all your ways will be sure./Do not swerve to the right or to the left;/turn your foot away from evil. (Proverbs 4:26-27)

There are six things the LORD hates,/seven that are an abomination to him:/haughty eyes, a lying tongue,/and hands that shed innocent blood,/a heart that devises wicked plans,/and feet that hurry to evil,/a lying witness who testifies falsely,/and one who sows discord in a family…./Can one walk on hot coals/without scorching the feet?/So is he who sleeps with his neighbor’s wife;/no one who touches her will go unpunished. (Proverbs 6:16-19, 28-29)

Proverbs here differs from many of the Psalms, quite a few of which seem transactional. It’s as though if the speaker compliments God enough, the latter will save the former from the attacks of his vicious enemy. Proverbs at least sticks to a behavioral standard: good deeds bring happiness, safety, good fortune, and a long life while bad ones ensure the opposite. Buttering up the Almighty here is not the way to go. So, what do you, my readers, think of all this?

All quotations are from this New Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition (St. Mary’s Press, 2000).