The Message of Proverbs

The Message of Proverbs
By David Atkinson
IVP 'The Bible Speaks Today' series
173 pages. £8.99
ISBN 0 85111 166 1

David Atkinson is in his element in the book of Proverbs, delighting in its portraits (especially of the lady Wisdom), its swift sayings and the kaleidoscopic scene it thrusts before us.
About the last of these, the heap of aphorisms in the central chapters, he remarks that: 'perhaps its jumbled-up aspect is even a deliberate ploy to reflect life as it is!' - but he is ready to do some sorting of the pile, subject by subject, combining clarity with comprehensiveness. This he manages by quoting a representative saying or two on a given topic in his main text, while adding another dozen or so, verbatim, in a substantial footnote on the same page. So we neither lose our way nor go short of data.
He is also helpful on the strong assertions of reward and punishments, seen as 'an affirmation of faith to live by', and on the character sketches as inviting the question: 'Where are we in the pictures?'. As he puts it, Wisdom asks us: 'Do you live like that?'.
True to the series title, The Bible Speaks Today, this is a book very much aware of the contemporary scene in life and thought. The author's hospitable mind finds room for writers in many traditions, from Aristotle to Iris Murdoch, and commentators from Matthew Henry to T.A. Perry. Sometimes perhaps the hospitality is overdone, e.g. in welcoming Perry's technique of dismembering certain types of proverb and reassembling their components into new patterns. Thus the masterly saying: 'Better a dinner of herbs where love is ...' (15.17), takes almost a page to unpack, with nothing gained; and the proverb: 'A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother' raises quibbles about the division of parental roles in the verse, and a sage remark about Isaac's joy in Esau's cooking.
We could question also the suggestion that the use of aphorisms lends support to the practice of deriving doctrine from experience, as the liberation theologians require - whereas in fact the biblical book precedes its largely self-evident sayings with nine chapters of doctrine-based instruction.
So there are some gently provocative opinions to think over, but the tone of the whole is warmly conservative in its reverence for the text and confidence in its teaching. At it is eminently readable, capturing the reader's attention at once, steering him through the material with chapter headings such as 'Wisdom's portrait', 'Wisdom's instructors and detractors', 'Wisdom's values', and lightening the mixture with shafts of poetry and prose from unexpected quarters. All this too, with no lack of attention to detail.
We can be grateful for a distinguished addition to the series.

Derek Kidner

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