Proverbs: From the beginning

Today, we really are going to start from the beginning of Proverbs.

Prologue: Purpose and Theme

¹ The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

² for attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight;

³ for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair;

⁴ for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young-

5 let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance-

⁶ for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.

⁷ The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Proverbs 1:1-7

Discussion Questions

• Who wrote Proverbs? What do you know about him?
• What are some of the purposes he wrote Proverbs?
• attaining wisdom and discipline
• understanding words of insight
• acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair
• giving prudence to the simple, nowledge and discretion to the young
• verse 2 talks about attaing wisdom and discipline.
• The Hebrew word here translated wisdom is chokmah which can mean knowing how to fight well, knowing how to manage things well, or knowing how to make right decisions.
• The Hebrew word here translated discipline is muwcar and can mean discipline in the sense of being disciplined or corrected as in a parent disciplining or correcting their child.
• Thus we can see that Proverbs not only can teach you how to make good decisions but also show you the bad decisions you make
• verse 2 also talks about understanding words of insight
• The Hebrew word translated understanding is biyn which means to carefully consider and understand, to discern
• the words of insight could be talking about sayings or writings that help people to understand how to do things
• I get the sense from this phrase, that we are talking about school learning or being trained (maybe as an apprentice) how to do something
• verse 3 refers to wise behavior, doing what is right and fair to other people
• verse 4 talks about teaching people how to take care of themselves and giving the young knowledge and teaching them how to make wise choices
• verse 5 tells us that the proverbs can make a wise man wiser and someone who makes good decisions will be able to make better decisions. In other words, you can always get wiser!
• from verse 6, we see that the wisdom you obtain will help you to understand the proverbs better, which give you more wisdom, which help you understand the proverbs which...
• we've already looked at verse 7 which tells us that wisdom comes from having a proper respect of God!
• Do you want to be wise or be a fool?
• what things do you want to be wiser in?
• How do you think you can become wiser?