Christ in Proverbs

Proverbs opens by naming its whole purpose - To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding (v. 2) - and then sets the cornerstone under all of it: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (v. 7). It is the sentence the book is built on. Wisdom here is not a cold abstraction; before the chapter is done she has become a voice, a woman who crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets (v. 20), pleading in the busiest places of the ci…

Proverbs 2 is one long sentence in the Hebrew - a single, unbroken if… then from a father to a son. If you receive the words, incline your ear, cry after knowledge, and dig for wisdom as for hid treasures (vv. 1-4), then two things follow that no effort could earn: Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God (v. 5). The chapter teaches both that wisdom is searched for like buried silver and that, in the end, it is a gift - For the…

Proverbs 3 is a father’s string of counsels to his son, and at its center stands one of the best-loved sentences in all of Scripture: Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths (vv. 5-6). The chapter then turns to a tender truth that the New Testament takes up word for word. My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction: for whom the L…

Proverbs 4 is the most personal of the father’s speeches: he does not only command his son to seek wisdom, he tells him where his own came from. For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words (vv. 3-4). The wisdom he hands down is the wisdom once handed to him - faith passed from one generation to the next, the very thing the apostle Paul praises in Timothy: the unfeigned fa…

Proverbs 5 is a father’s plain, sober talk to his son about faithfulness, and it works by holding two paths side by side. The first begins sweetly and ends in death: For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell (vv. 3-5). The chapter never argues that the forbidden road has no pleasure at its mouth; it argues, sob…

Proverbs 6 is not one lesson but a handful of them, and its connections to Christ run by quiet, exact quotation rather than by force. The father sends the lazy man to school to an insect - Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise (v. 6) - and the Lord taught in the same school of creation, pointing His hearers to the birds and the flowers: Behold the fowls of the air… Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow (Matt. 6:26, 28), and Consider…

Proverbs 7 is the most vivid of the father’s warnings, but it is framed at both ends by something positive: a command to bind wisdom close and live. My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee. Keep my commandments, and live (vv. 1-2) - and the words the Lord spoke to His own on the last night sound like the same plea in a new key: If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15). The keeping is not for its own sake but for life, and the Lord defined the li…

Proverbs 8 is the longest speech of personified Wisdom in all of Scripture, and the New Testament reaches for its language again and again. She takes her stand in the busiest places and cries to everyone - Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man (v. 4) - and the wisdom thus crying aloud the apostle names openly as a Person: Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24); Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30); the On…

Proverbs 9 sets two banquets side by side, and the Gospel takes up the image and fills it. Wisdom builds her house, prepares her table, and sends out her call: Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled (v. 5). The One the apostle names the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24) spread exactly such a table - I am that bread of life (John 6:48); Take, eat; this is my body… this is my blood (Matt. 26:26-28) - and told a parable of a great supper whose serv…

With Proverbs 10 the short sayings begin, and two of them open straight onto Christ. The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life (v. 11) - and the wisdom of God in person is the One from whom living water flows: out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38), the One whose disciples confessed, thou hast the words of eternal life (John 6:68). And the chapter’s most quoted line, love covereth all sins (v. 12), is taken up by the apostle as a picture of gra…

Proverbs 11 turns on righteousness that rescues and generosity that multiplies, and both run straight to Christ. Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death (v. 4) - and the only righteousness that can stand in that day is the gift the apostle preaches, for God made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21). The chapter’s strange arithmetic - there is that scattereth, and ye…

Proverbs 12 weighs truth against falsehood and finds that only truth lasts: The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment (v. 19). The wisdom of God in person is the truth that abides - I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6) - whose word outlasts the world itself: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35). The chapter’s tender, surprising line - A righteous man regardeth the life of…

Proverbs 13 knows the ache of waiting - Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life (v. 12) - and the Gospel answers the longing with a Person. He is named the desire of all nations (Hag. 2:7), the hope that does not make ashamed (Rom. 5:5), Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27); and when He comes, the heart-sick waiting opens into the tree of life He restores (Rev. 22:2). The chapter calls the wise instruction a fountain of…

Proverbs 14 warns of a road that fools no one so much as the traveler: There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death (v. 12). Against every such self-deceiving path the Gospel sets the One who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), the narrow way that few find but that leads to life (Matt. 7:13-14). The chapter names the fear of the LORD twice as the place of safety - strong confidence and a place of refuge for His child…

Proverbs 15 opens on a line the Gospel will embody: A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger (v. 1). The wisdom of God in person was that soft answer - when he was reviled, reviled not again (1 Pet. 2:23) - the One who said learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29) and pronounced blessed the meek and the peacemakers (Matt. 5:5, 9). The chapter twice lifts the eyes upward - The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the ev…

Proverbs 16 sets human planning beside divine purpose and refuses to let go of either: A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps (v. 9), and Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established (v. 3). The wisdom of God in person walked exactly this way - truly choosing, truly free, yet wholly committed to the One who ordered His steps: I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me (John 6:38), an…

Proverbs 17 gathers the quiet virtues - peace over plenty, an offense covered rather than rehearsed, a friendship that does not change with the weather - and each of them points beyond itself to Christ. The chapter prizes a dry morsel, and quietness therewith above an house full of sacrifices with strife (v. 1), and the One who is our peace made peace through the blood of his cross (Col. 1:20) and left His own my peace I give unto you (John 14:27). It says He that covereth…

Proverbs 18 sets one unshakable refuge against every false one: The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe (v. 10), over against The rich man’s wealth… as an high wall in his own conceit (v. 11). To run into the name is to run into who God is - and the New Testament gives that name a face, for God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name (Phil. 2:9), a strong tower from the enemy (Ps. 61:3) in wh…

Proverbs 19 sets two surprising things side by side: a God who counts mercy to the poor as a personal debt, and a purpose no human scheme can overturn. The first is unmistakable in the New Testament. When the proverb says He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again (v. 17), it anticipates the One who will say, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matt.…

Proverbs 20 keeps returning to one humbling fact - a person cannot be trusted to judge himself - and at its center stands a question no one can answer in his own strength: Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? (v. 9). The chapter expects silence; no honest heart can claim it. And the Gospel answers the question the proverb leaves hanging. The cleansing the verse says no one can perform for himself is exactly what God promises to do - I will sprink…

Proverbs 21 opens at the highest seat of human power and shows it resting, like everything else, in the hand of God: The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will (v. 1). The wisdom of God in person stood before the highest authority in the land and named that same truth aloud: Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above (John 19:11). The chapter prizes mercy and justice abov…

Proverbs 22 opens with a scale of values the Gospel will sharpen to a point: A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches (v. 1) - and the New Testament holds out a name above every name, a name which is above every name (Phil. 2:9), the one good name given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). The chapter levels rich and poor before their common Maker - The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all (v. 2) - the truth the apostle pre…

Proverbs 23 is a father’s long counsel that keeps coming back to one thing - the heart. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he (v. 7) names the truth the whole chapter turns on: a person is, finally, what their inner self loves and pursues. So the father presses his son to apply thine heart unto instruction (v. 12), to guide thine heart in the way (v. 19), and not to envy sinners but to be… in the fear of the LORD all the day long , holding to a hope that cannot…

Proverbs 24 keeps setting the envied life of the wicked beside the building work of wisdom, and along the way it sounds notes the Gospel will take up and complete. It refuses to let anyone look away from people in mortal danger - If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death… doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? (vv. 11-12) - and the One who came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10) did exactly the delivering the verse demand…

Proverbs 25 turns again and again on the power of words and the harder power of restraint, and the New Testament gathers up both in the One who is the wisdom of God. The chapter prizes the right word at the right moment - A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver (v. 11) - and points to the One who spoke as never man spake and knew how to speak a word in season to him that is weary (Isa. 50:4; John 7:46). It celebrates the faithful messenger who refr…

Proverbs 26 is a long, unflinching look at the fool, the sluggard, and the troublemaker - and its most quoted lines turn out to bear, at a distance, on the wisdom of God in person. At the chapter’s center stands a deliberate paradox: Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit (vv. 4-5). Two verses that seem to cancel, set side by side on purpose, because there is no rul…

Proverbs 27 turns on the costly nearness of true friendship, and the New Testament shows where that friendship finds its fullness. The chapter prizes the friend honest enough to wound: Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful (v. 6) - and the wisdom of God in person was the faithful friend whose hardest words were love, who let one of His own betray Him with a kiss (Luke 22:48), and who called His disciples no longer servants but friend…

Proverbs 28 weighs two ways of standing before God and the world. It opens with a line that the whole chapter unfolds: The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion (v. 1). Guilt makes a person run from shadows; a clean conscience makes him fearless. The New Testament names where that boldness finally comes from - not from a flawless record but from One who gives it: we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him (Eph. 3:12), s…

Proverbs 29 opens on a sober warning and closes on a refuge, and Christ stands at both ends. The first verse describes the man that being often reproved hardeneth his neck and is therefore suddenly… destroyed, and that without remedy (v. 1) - the very hardness against which the One who is the wisdom of God pleaded as He wept over a city: O Jerusalem… how often would I have gathered thy children together… and ye would not! (Matt. 23:37), and over which…

Proverbs 30 turns from the long teacher-to-son chapters to the words of Agur the son of Jakeh (v. 1), and Agur begins by emptying himself of every claim to wisdom: Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy (vv. 2-3). Out of that low place he asks the questions no one on earth can answer: Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists?…

Proverbs ends with two charges that the Gospel takes up directly. The first is a king’s vocation, taught to Lemuel by his mother: Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction… plead the cause of the poor and needy (vv. 8-9). That is the office a true King exists to fill, and the One whose throne is established… for ever took it up in person - he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor… to set at liberty…