Ap English Proverbs

There are several books in the Bible that teach different things and speak differently to each reader. However, there are certain books that stand out in particular; for example, Proverbs. This book is one of the greatest books in the Bible! Reason being, is it teaches and informs of Hebrew wisdom. It explains the teaching of wisdom and how it relates to a persons everyday life. The book of Proverbs really explains the fact that the key to wisdom and knowledge is fearing the Lord. Therefore, a person needs to be reliant on the Lord and try to make every decision based on what the Lord wants for the life that a person lives; afterall, if people chase after the world, do not know God and have a relationship and they do not fear the Lord,

Proverbs 14:8 The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly of fools is deceit.

There exists a common phenomenon in my high school that whenever someone forgot to bring his ruler and one of his classmates kindly lent him once, he would probably not bring his ruler ever after and kept borrowing from other classmates. This is widely accepted as and explained by the aphorism “Give a man an inch and he’ll take a mile”, which indicates that when you are generous to someone, he will demand more. In other words, this saying points out that people are never satisfied. In fact, not only does this aphorism have implications in our daily lives, it also shed light on a broader context in social science such as unemployment insurance policy. In order to determine the validity of this aphorism in the society today, we could conduct an experiment targeting the college students who are randomly assigned into two groups, and examine how they would respond differently after they received a different endowment of money.

Proverbs are phrases use to explain certain solutions. Proverbs can explain specific situations within certain words to get the point across. The function for proverbs is to describe something without having to be forward with what is being said. There were five proverbs from things fall apart that stuck out to me. These proverbs are “when a man says yes chi also says yes”, what is good in one place is bad in another”, “If I fall down for you and you fall down for it is play”, “A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness” and “If one brought oil soiled it others”

Throughout the Bible, we see the importance of being diligent in our walk with Christ as oppose to falling asleep and becoming lazy. As followers of Christ, we know that by applying the knowledge given to us from the Bible can have a profound impact on our lives. When we study God's Word, we receive wisdom and we are then able to use this wisdom in our daily lives. However, if we choose to not be diligent in our walk with Christ, then we could possibly backslide as a result of being lazy and falling into deeper sin. In this essay we will look at what the Hebrew teachings say about diligence as oppose to being lazy regarding our following of Christ.

Schwáb’s systematic analysis on Deuteronomy presents that the motive clauses in Deuteronomy are about effectiveness and long life that are not indifferent from Proverbs’ self-interest. Reading Proverbs 1-9 as the context of Proverbs’ sentence-literature levels out the seeming non-Yahwistic characters of Proverbs. These results allow Schwáb to view that Proverbs is no more self-interested than the rest of the Bible. He goes on to say that the honor as a result of wise life and the openness of better-than sayings allude to Proverbs’ search for non-material gains, the search that is similarly visible in Thomistic system.

Thus, as a people they were heavily reliant on oral tradition. Everything they taught such as religious values and legends, were all passed down orally. As a result, proverbs came to be. Proverbs were an easy way to illustrate concepts that would otherwise go unnamed. Moreover, they were used to tell stories and teach lessons in a short witty fashion.

The two words, wisdom, and folly are inseparable; they cannot be away from each other. Folly is the act of having the knowledge of the benefits of making a good choice, but rather choosing the wrong or foolish decision. Diligence is the act of being aware of something. Therefore, one who often postpones activities and comes up with excuses is lazy (Hindson & Yates, 2012). The Hebrew wisdom books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Songs of Songs, and Psalms covers teachings on diligence, folly, wisdom, and laziness. Proverbs explains the differences between wisdom and folly as well as diligence and laziness clearly.

The Egyptian “Instructions of Amenemopet” influence the Israelite book of Proverbs with the wisdom literature. This was commonly used to train young people in morals and to ensure competent work in the court of the king. As many scholars felt as though it influenced Proverbs.

The book of Proverbs is tilted in Hebrew Mishtey Shelomoh “The Proverbs of Solomon”; however, the book of Proverbs does not mention the history of Israel, but it focuses on everyday human interactions in the community (dCW Lecture #31). In Kings 4:29 we observe a tribute to Solomon, it reads, “God gave Solomon great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding…so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed all the people of the east,” however Solomon did not author the book of Proverbs (dCW Lecture #31). The book of Proverbs is an anthology a “collections of collections” which achieve its final form during the latter part of the postexilic period (dCW Lecture #31). It is divided into seven parts with a heading for every part (dCW Lecture #31). In

Clifton says that, “A distinguishing mark of Proverbs is its use of types; it categorizes people” (Clifton, 1994). Clifton adds, “”Proverbs indeed employs types, usually antithetically paired, to describe behavior and its consequences – the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, the lazy and the diligent, the rich and the poor” (1994). Nestled in among the near 300 topics covered in the book of Proverbs are two said pairings, diligence and laziness. Diligence in the Old Testament is defined as “active, with care, with speed, speedily, earnestly, early, with haste, industrious, and exacting” (Macmillian Dictionary of the Bible, n.d.). In stark contrast, a term used to indicate laziness in the Old Testament, slothful, is defined as, “inactive, foolish, slack, sluggish, habitually idle, unemployed, shrinking, and troublesome” (Macmillian Dictionary of the Bible, n.d). The vastness of their differences are illustrated in Scriptures. The Bible says the one that is diligent seeks and secures (Proverbs 11:27), is fully satisfied (Proverbs 3:4), and bring riches with their hands (Proverbs 10:4). Solomon adamantly instructed that diligence leads to abundance, positions, power, leadership, and life. Comparatively, slack hands usher in poverty and ruin (Proverbs 10:4), and create insatiable cravings (Proverbs 13:3). Further, the lazy is disgusting to his employer (Proverbs 10:26), is shameful (Proverbs 19:15), and has no sense (Proverbs

The personification of woman as wisdom and folly suggests a polarization that lives between the two worlds. Woman (or simply rather humans, I suggest woman because of the word choices that appear to assume life as seen through the lens of birth) cannot simply have a middle ground, they must play into the tropes of "good" womanhood, the Woman Wisdom, or "harlotry" womanhood, the Woman of Folly- oh how Proverbs hates and fetishizes her! An interesting thought written about this very idea comes from Claudia Camp, a professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Texas Christian University. Camp wrote, "Along with her counterpart, Woman Stranger [Woman Folly, in my paper], she [Woman Wisdom] may be seen as part of patriarchy's perennial classification of all women as either all-good or all-evil…" (Camp).

The book of Proverbs is a collection of proverbs, poems, and parables written by King Solomon in efforts to teach wisdom to God’s people. Although I would not deem myself to be an extremely religious person, I believe I identify with with Proverbs the most because whether you are religious or not this book of biblical wisdom teaches many moral lessons that can be applied for a better life and connect with many contemporary issues. This is important on a grander scale as well because as many people of my generation see the Bible as something that should only be read and applied to your life if you believe in God, but these verses reveal that they can used to teach you how to live a good life in this day of age regardless of religious background by looking at the Bible as a literary source instead of solely just a religious one.

Abstract: Christianity is the most influential religion in west world while the Bible is often labeled as a“Western book”and considered a

Proverbs chapter ten talks about quite a few topics, to list the moral categories mentioned throughout the proverb there is diligence, laziness, language and personal security. This proverb comes from Solomon and starts off with the difference between the foolish son and a wise son. The wise son gives joy to the to the parent whereas the foolish one brings sorrow. In the same sort of comparison continuing on with the foolish like the lazy and the wise like the diligent, the proverb continues on in saying that lazy people are quick to become poor and the diligent person who’s hardworking will acquire wealth. That the wise are willing to be instructed and people go about safely when they have integrity. Language as another moral category