Jeffrey D. Arthurs

EHS, October, 2004

Proverbs are a universal literary form.  Like stories and poems, they are common in nearly every culture and era. They abound in modern Western culture just as they did in the ancient world.  We see them on tee shirts, coffee mugs, posters, and calendars.  Parents quote them to children, teachers quote them to students, friends quote them to friends, and the media quotes them to everyone.

            The largest repository of biblical proverbs is, of course, the Book of Proverbs, but this literary form, the shortest of all genres, is scattered throughout the Bible as in 1 Samuel 10:12, �Therefore, it became a proverb, �Is Saul also among the prophets?�� and Hosea 8:7, �They sow the wind, they reap the whirlwind.� Crossan estimates that there are 130 aphorisms in the Gospels alone.[1]

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the formal and rhetorical features of the genre�how this genre communicates and what it does�so that we can reproduce some of those features for our sermons.

How Proverbs Communicate, What Proverbs Do

Three questions reveal the key literary and rhetorical features of proverbs: (1) Who speaks (and listens to) a proverb? (2) What do they say? (3) How do they say it?

The Words of the Wise: Who Speaks (and Listens To) a Proverb?

Proverbs are found on the lips of authorities. The teacher guides the student, �Haste makes waste!� and the parent warns the child, �He who walks with wise men will be wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.� Each of the first seven chapters of Proverbs begins by addressing �my son� as the father urges his child to �accept my words (2:1), �do not forget my teaching� (3:1), �pay attention (4:1), �listen well to my words of insight� (5:1), and so forth. Clearly, the Book of Proverbs is a repository of advice from an authority to a subordinate, and that relationship is normal when we speak proverbs. Paraemiologist Neal Norrick states: �In citing a proverb, the speaker signals . . . that he wants to or at least is willing to assume the role of teacher/advisor for his hearers. One would hardly expect a child to utter proverbs to his parents or teachers.�[2] The use of the proverb allows the speaker to borrow authority from traditional wisdom to support his or her own ideas.

That phrase �traditional wisdom� is crucial in understanding the rhetorical force of proverbs because these anonymous sayings circulate as the distillation of cultural values. As Norrick states, �Hearers tend to react to proverbial utterances as they would to directives from authoritative sources. The weight of traditional or majority opinion inculcates proverbial utterances with authority.�[3] Proverbs are �common sense,� thus speakers easily incorporate them like �commonplaces� into myriad discussions. �Commonplaces� were stock arguments from classical rhetoric which could be plugged into nearly any argument.[4]

Proverb users take the mantle of authority, but this does not imply that listeners are automatons who respond like Pavlov�s dogs. On the contrary, proverbs prompt speakers and listeners to collaborate to produce meaning. You see, proverbial meaning can be determined only from the context of its utterance. This rhetorical phenomenon occurs because proverbs are pithy and often use poetic language. I�ll say more about these features below, but here my point is that proverbs are so short that they cannot present a nuanced argument, and their language may be so figurative that meaning may not be readily apparent.

For example, I have heard the proverb �Silence is golden� applied to three different situations: A mother ordered her child to be quiet with the proverb; a girl consoled her shy date when awkward phrases entered the conversation; and a third speaker exuded contentment over the stillness of a forest.[5] Each speaker expected the �interpreter� to rely upon context for correct interpretation.

When Jesus speaks proverbs in the Gospels, we have sufficient context to understand the potentially ambiguous sayings, but the book of Proverbs supplies less context. While chapters 1-9 are unified poems, most of the other chapters are simply a catalog of maxims. Yet even within this catalog, the compiler has given us some �context� by grouping sayings by topics like the drunkard ( 23:29 -35), the king (25:2-7), and the sluggard (26:13-16). Some scholars such as Garrett believe that context also exists on a more subtle level than obvious cohesion by theme.[6] Catch words and inclusio sometimes indicate that the compiler intended a group of proverbs to shed light on each other.

The necessity of context for interpreting proverbs produces interesting communication dynamics. One dynamic is collaboration. The speaker discerns what proverb fits a given situation and then �encodes� meaning about that situation with a proverb. The listener must �decode� the speaker�s intention. Meaning does not often reside in literal words and straightforward transmission. Instead, speaker and listener must jointly construct meaning using contextual clues. Thus, communicating with proverbs is risky business.  �This is the irony of the proverb form: it speaks wisdom, but it also requires wisdom to be rightly heard and employed.�[7]

            The risk is similar to what occurs when a speaker uses irony. The �point� lies in authorial intention, not always in literal language, and the audience must reconstruct the author�s meaning. On a stormy day I may say to you, �Nice day,� but I intend to communicate the opposite of the literal words, and I depend on you to figure that out. As we all know, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn�t, but when it does work, the dynamic unites sender and receiver as they collaborate to construct meaning.[8]

These pithy and figurative sayings seem folksy on the surface, but the more you get to know them, the more you see the complex dynamics that occur when  sages speak.

 Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: What Do Proverbs Say?

Proverbs transfer hokmah to the  na�ve. Dundes calls proverbs �charters for belief and models for action.�[9] In the Hebrew Bible hokmah is a �teachable craft,�[10] giving �prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young� (1:4). For example, money can�t buy happiness (Eccl. 5:10 ); pride comes before the fall (Prov. 11:2); and he who guards his lips guards his life (13:3).

These biblical proverbs may sound like the oratory of inspirational speakers,[11] but what makes them different from humanistic wisdom is not so much their content as their theological underpinning, namely, the fear of the Lord which is the beginning or �chief part� of hokmah (1:7). Reverencing and trembling before God mitigates the potential hubris of Proverbs. These snappy sayings sound like self-help humanism only if we see the world as existing independently from the King, but �for Israel the experiences of the world were always divine experiences, and the experiences of God were always experiences of the world. The world is never experienced as purely secular, as apart from the Lord who controls it and who is revealed in it.�[12]

Proverbs transfer hokmah by making observations on repeated phenomena. These observations are made in present tense, indicative mood, implying that �this is the way things are.� The intention behind the book of Proverbs is, of course, admonitory, but it makes its admonitions by calling us to observe: The contentious wife is irksome; the hot-headed man makes enemies; the gossip loses friends; and so forth. These sayings admonish us to take action, but the admonition does not burst through the front door in a huff. It comes through the back door and invites us to concur before we act.

 Because proverbs summarize phenomena and yet are quite short, they must distill insight. Leland Ryken calls them moments of �epiphany.�[13]  For example, thousands of cases demonstrate that money does not bringing happiness. All of those cases are distilled in Ecclesiastes 5:10, �He who loves money never has money enough.� As Ricoeur states, �Without being a narrative, a proverb implies a story.�[14]

Since proverbs distill general categories of human experience, we must remember that they are not promises. �A proverb is larger than one case, but not large enough to embrace all cases. . . . As wisdom, they transcend a single situation, but they do not have indiscriminate force to be applied anywhere and at all times.�[15] For example, the biblical sage has observed that the fear of the Lord adds years to life ( 9:11 ), but presumably the same sage would not deny that holy men and women have been martyred. �Those who utter proverbs do not worry about possible exceptions (neither do lyric poets); they trust people to use their common sense in recognizing that a proverb need not cover every possible situation.�[16]

In our goal to preach genre-sensitive sermons, the next question is particularly interesting because much of the rhetorical force of a genre or a sermon lies in its form.

Pleasant Words are a Honeycomb: How Do Proverbs Talk?

The most obvious stylistic feature of proverbs is that they are short. An entire literary unit can be as few as six words in Hebrew and not many more in English.  Their brevity makes proverbs easily memorized. As Alter states, �The didactic poet does not want to set up eddies and undercurrents in the unruffled flow of his language, because the wisdom itself derives from a sense of balanced order, confident assertion, assured consequences for specific acts and moral stances.�[17] Similarly, Smith states, �To epigrammize an experience is to strip it down, to cut away irrelevance, to eliminate local, specific, and descriptive detail, to reduce it to and fix it in its most permanent and stable aspect, to sew it up for eternity.�[18]

Even though proverbs can be quite short, we must not forget that they are poems. They utilize figurative language, hyperbole, chiasmus, and all the other features of Hebrew poetry including all types of parallelism. Like all literature, proverbs comment on the universal by way of the particular. They utilize synecdoche even more than metaphor. The �tent� stands for the family unit, a �faithful witness� stands for the whole class of truth telling folk, and the �tongue� stands for the awesome power of language. Sometimes this figurative language needs �translation� from one culture to another as when Ecclesiastes 9:4 speaks of the �living dog� and �dead lion.� In ancient Israel dogs were despised and lions revered. Exegetical digging yields homiletical treasure.

As brief poems, the aural qualities of proverbs are prominent. Rhythm and rhyme, alliteration and assonance help proverbs lodge in memory and exhibit their roots in spoken communication.[19] �Birds of a feather flock together� stays with us better than �Persons who bear striking resemblance tend to associate with one another.�

Many of these aural qualities are mitigated when translated, so if you have the ability to read Proverbs aloud in Hebrew, I suggest you do so. The compact nature of Hebrew, particularly evident in proverbial style, gives these gems a brilliance which is lost when words swell in translation. Here is a literal translation of 16:18 , �Before breaking, pride.  Before stumbling, haughtiness.� Sometimes a commentary or felicitous translation will maintain Hebrew�s aural qualities, as with Williams� rendering of 12:11 , �The tiller of soil has his fill of bread, but the pursuer of vanities has an empty head.�[20]

Proverbial style not only enhances memory, it also functions rhetorically to prompt listeners to yield to the content. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explains:

Proverbs sound authoritative. The truths they proclaim feel absolute . . . . The proverb�s form reinforces this effect by sounding so �right.� Neat symmetries and witty convergences of sound and meaning, tight formulations of logical relations, highly patterned repetitions, structural balance and familiar metaphors encapsulate general principles and contribute to the feeling that anything that sounds so right must be true.[21]

Another feature of proverbial style is fondness for humor. A translation like Today�s English Version or The Message helps capture the impish spirit of stones tied in slings, thorn bushes in a drunkard�s hand, dogs returning to their vomit, lions roaming the street, sluggards too lazy to withdraw their hands from the dish, and a man grabbing a dog by the ears (26:8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17). Like all humorists, the sage of Proverbs makes us grin by unexpected or incongruous juxtaposition. For example, the parallelism of 11:10 sets us up to expect rejoicing with prosperity and wailing with perishing, but instead we hear �shouts of joy� when somebody perishes. That�s what happens when the wicked perish. Yippee!

The last stylistic feature I will mention is the prominence of the female role. Women are present literally when addressed or described as mothers, wives, harlots, and they are present figuratively when the noble woman personifies wisdom as in chapter 8. McKenzie argues that the unusual presence of the female in wisdom literature fits the genre well. Speaking generally, not descriptively of every case, women/proverbs focus on the mundane specifics of daily experience, and women/proverbs tend to communicate indirectly. �Though often excluded from formal, public arenas . . . women occupy a role as informal historians and social critics and arbiters of morality. Given the place of women in the traditional social order, it makes sense that wisdom, a highly pragmatic religious tradition, would be imaged in female form.�[22]

Strategies for Preaching this Genre

Preachers have many options for re-communicating proverbs since these sound bites of hokmah connect with �secondary orality��cultures where people can read but have been socialized to think in stories, relationships, and proverbs. Most people learn and verbalize their faith this way.[23] Most of my suggestions below help preachers move toward what Tisdale calls � preaching as local theology and folk art.�[24]

1.      Do not preach selfish behavior, humanism, or materialism.

I have heard many sermons that walked a fine line (and sometimes went over the line) when offering all that God offers��the fear of the Lord brings wealth and honor and life� (22:4)�but they left out the fear of the Lord! Proverbs are not prescriptions for the American dream. They are prescriptions for how to live skillfully in a world created by the sovereign, generous, and fearsome Master. The first step in living skillfully is to revere God. To use proverbs to enthrone self is to make a categorical error, or as Long states, �To listen to a proverb without at the same time hearing its covenantal background is to pry a gem from its setting.�[25]

�Health and wealth� sermons are common in the �Prosperity Gospel� movement, but a subtle form also shows up in the �Seeker Sensitive� movement. As part of that movement for many years, I walked the line myself. Ask God to give you wisdom to handle biblical proverbs the way the compiler handled them: as motivation and instruction to walk the strait path, not as way to baptize carnal desire.

2.      Preach thought units.

This is standard procedure when preaching any genre, but I call attention to it here because determining thought units in Proverbs can be tricky. While the long poems of chapters 1-9 and 30-31 are self-evident units, the catalog of individual proverbs are often grouped with other short proverbs of similar theme; but sometimes the connection is subtle. You may not see immediately what proverb x has to do with proverb y, but look again. Expect unity.

Having said this, a topical approach can also be a genre-sensitive way to preach from the catalog. The book of Proverbs  tosses out observations on themes like old age, gossip, laziness, alcohol, and humility. We can gather all the proverbs on a theme and preach a complete message or series on that theme. In a sense, your �text� is the entire book from which you glean a number of short pericopes.

3.      Use your imagination.

This genre communicates with images, so in our study we should imagine those images. This is what the original author intended. Try to see, hear, and feel the firebrands, pigs, jewels, trees, crowns, rods, scales, and fountains. As you use your imagination in exegesis, remember that many images need �translation.� We no longer live on our roofs (25:24). In our preaching , the mocker shooting �firebrands and deadly arrows� (26:18) may toss dynamite and shoot a shotgun, or he may drop napalm and discharge a cannon.

4.      Show as well as tell.

Proverbs admonish, but they often do so by simply observing phenomena. For example, �Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but provocation by a fool is heavier than both� (27:3). The proverb clearly intends to exhort: �Don�t be a fool! Don�t burden people with silly aggravation�; but the exhortation is made in the indicative mood. In other cases, proverbs mix the imperative and the indicative moods as in this one: �Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth� (27:1). The intent is always to produce volitional or ideational change, but �observation� is the horse that pulls the cart.

            Preachers who want to reproduce the rhetorical impact of the indicative, even while clearly intending the imperative, should make observations. We can do so by using statistics, examples, current events, and stories. Remember that a story, or a group of stories, lies behind each proverb.  Show the congregation the result of cheerful words. Show them what is happening in society because of alcohol abuse. Encourage and warn by describing �the way things are.�

5.      Turn on the spot light.

As an extension of Suggestion 4, McKenzie tells us to turn on the �spotlight,� not the �floodlight.�[26] This means to rove mentally through society searching for situations which should be illumined by a particular proverb. To use a different figure, �like the binoculars one finds at scenic overlooks, the proverb beckons us to pull over for just a moment and look through it out over the landscape of our journey, looking for situations to which it can bring ethical clarity.�[27] Proverbs describe and provide hokmah for apt situations, not all situations. The sage knows the difference, but the fool doesn�t. That is why a proverb in the mouth of a fool is as useless as a lame man�s legs (Proverbs 26:7).

In terms of our preaching , this means that swing the spotlight across society to find situations illumined by the proverb; then �narratives, vignettes, story-like threads that the proverb tugs from the fabric of everyday life would be told, each thread punctuated by the proverb itself, quoted as an interpretive refrain.�[28]

6.      Make your central idea �proverbial.�

With uncanny unanimity, theorists of speech communication have emphasized the value of communicating one unified idea.[29] If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then the central idea is the beginning of oral communication. The best central ideas are those which lodge in memory, and that task is easily accomplished when we borrow proverbial style�brevity, balance, image, and sound values. When we center our sermons of one captivating idea, we preach not only as the sages spoke, but also as the listeners listen because in the age of secondary orality distilled, memorable phrases are as common as cell phones. Advertisers coin jingles to lodge in memory, and politicians summarize their messages in one-liners to make the evening news. We live in the age of the sound bite.

One way to make our central ideas proverbial is by using the proverb itself. A statement like �life and death are in the power of the tongue� ( 18:21 ) is concise and striking, just the kind we want for our big ideas.

We can also coin our own proverb. When preaching on how to overcome bitterness, John Piper argued that people who hold grudges try to take judgment into their own hands, not trusting God to dispense justice. The argument was dense, so Piper gave the people a nugget to take home: �If you hold a grudge, you slight the Judge.�[30] When arguing for the �the supremacy of God in preaching � he says, �The one who satisfies gets the glory; the one who gives the pleasure is the treasure.�[31]

Another way to preach proverbs �proverbially� is by rephrasing a modern proverb. We can �learn a lesson from the parodist who boldly goes where he is not supposed to go.�[32] Instead of �Seeing is believing� we can proclaim �Believing is seeing.� Or try this one: �Life is short, pray hard.�[33]

7.      Dueling proverbs.

Compare and contrast modern proverbs with biblical ones.  McKenzie calls this �dueling proverbs.�[34] This technique focuses two spotlights on the same situation, evaluating culture�s repository of wisdom with God�s. Sometimes our culture speaks truth, and sometimes it is found wanting. For example, �Money makes the world go round� could be paired with Proverbs 11: 28, �Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.� American proverbs that embody values such as progress (�Records are made to be broken�) and what McKenzie calls �visual empiricism� (�A picture is worth a thousand words,� �What you see is what you get�) need theological and homiletical scrutiny.[35] We must help our people take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. When preachers know the Bible�s proverbs and are mindful of culture�s proverbs, they are �equipped to offer the dehumanized consumers in the pews an alternative identity, worldview, and way of life.�[36]

8.      Borrow the proverb�s movement.

To organize your message according to how God communicated, try to reproduce the proverb�s flow of thought and feeling. For example, antithetical parallelism provides simple and clear sermonic movement: �This, not this,� or �this vs. this.� Synthetic parallelism suggests inductive form which culminates eventually in your main idea, and synonymous parallelism suggests a semi-inductive form which states your point but then circles back to intensify that point.

9.      Adopt the teacher�s stance.

How can preachers reproduce the pedagogical tone of Proverbs? Not by being authoritarian since proverbs aren�t (they make observations) but by encouraging listeners to ponder. As George MacDonald said, �The best thing you can do for your fellow man, next to rousing his conscience, is�not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; that is, to make him think things for himself.�[37]

Teachers know how to do this. They engage the students to surface latent knowledge, beliefs, and values. Of course, sometimes teachers must also correct false belief. Here are some �pedagogical techniques� I used when preaching a series from Proverbs:

�        Quiz. I asked the congregation multiple choice questions such as �what does the word �fear� mean in the phrase �the fear of the Lord.��

�        Participation. In a message directed to young people from 4:20 -27, I gave them a space to draw as we looked at the passage. The passage describes the ears, eyes, lips, heart, and feet of one who pursues wisdom, and the young people drew these body parts on a stick figure.

�        Discussion. I quoted a line from a �hymn��Twas guilt that taught my heart to fear and pride my fears relieved��and then asked the congregation what presuppositions about fear lie behind that hymn. Since the congregation was large, the �discussion� was hypothetical, taking place in their minds, but it nevertheless took place.[38]

10.  Feature women.

Even though women make up more than 60% of evangelical congregations, preachers (mostly men) usually do not address their needs and questions.[39] We need to more than lob Proverbs 31 to the congregation on Mother�s Day. Preaching Proverbs gives us the opportunity to praise the role women play in God�s kingdom, address them directly, and choose illustrations that connect with them.

11.  Use some humor.

Many proverbs use exaggeration and quirky juxtapositions. That�s how God has communicated to us. Try it yourself as you re-communicate the Word. Of course, if you don�t have a gift for humor, you might want to stick with numbers 1-10 above.  

Endnotes