Tem

Some proverbs

• Live simply that others may simply live.
• Measure twice cut once.
• Just do it.
• All work, no play makes jack a dull boy.
• Cleanliness is next to godliness.
• Don't shit where you eat.
• If at first you don't succeed,. . .
• Pride goeth before a fall
• A friend in need is a friend indeed
• Talk is cheap

Proverbs: Table of Contents and brief notes

• 1. 1.1-9.18: 3rd-4th bc, discourses of admonition and warning; 2 poems personifying wisdom (1.20-33 and 8.1-36); allegory of Wisdom and Folly 9.1-6, 13-18)

• 2. 10.2-22.16 Proverbs of Solomon (not authorship, but designates form - parallelisms and content - virtues/vices)

• 3. 22.17-24.22 Egyptian - "Instructions of Amen-em-ope"

• 4. 25.1 - 29.27 - Proverbs of Solomon

• Appendices:

• 24.23-34
• 30.1-9 - dialogue between a sceptic and believer
• 30.10-33 - admonition and proverbs - "progressive and numeric"
• 31.1-9 - queen mother's advice to young king
• 31.10-31 - ideal wife of prominent man.

Proverbs

• 1. 1.1-9.18: Divides, rhetorically at Book 10. First 10 books seem like instruction (Estes). Note misogyny. Women are temptresses. But note also that this section begins and ends with Wisdom personified in a female voice.

• Look at Proverb form: from Estes: contrast, enigmatic, compresses, pithy, uses analogy, understood to be generalizations.

• analogies and similes: 26:7ff (also literary convention in Illiad)
• my favorite: 26:11 "As a dog turneth again to his own vomit, so a fool turneth to his foolishness."

• Themes

• Wise lead orderly lives in fear of the Lord and they prosper because of it.
• Attitude of the wise is consistent and cheerful, even in the face of poverty. 15:15-17, also 19:1
• Contentment
• Decisions
• Diligence
• Friendships
• Generosity
• Humility
• Kindness
• Parenting
• Purity
• Truthfulness

• Proverbs offer integration of behavioral norms we should hold ourselves to with a vertical and transcendent moral order.

• Could we write proverbs for our time?

Job

Big Questions / Themes in Job

• Our question of Job: Why do the righteous suffer?
• Alternate frame for question: why is there contingency? why isn't the covenant a biconditional?
• Is there a cosmic justice and order or should the wise be prepared for a fundamentally unjust cosmos? (cf. Stoic faith)
• If there were cosmic justice, would you understand it?
• How should we approach suffering?
• (Problem of Job's visitors: What attitude to take to someone suffering if you suspect they are at fault?

• Anthropological wisdom reading of Job: Beginning of awareness of our nature as subjective; gap between ours and divine consciousness due to our nature. Develops in Christian practice as overcoming gap between subjects through love (agape). (So we might experience the gap between Job and God as beta of agape.)

• review details:

• Opening scene:
• Eliphaz: not direct accusation, but cosmic reminder: No mortal is justified before God. Lower yourself.
• Job's observations on life and "candor": 7:1-16
• Bildad the Shuhite: come on. can't imply God doesn't notice. Maybe it's something your kids did?
• Job's reply (really to Eliphaz): can't judge God, but that means he's remote. There's no go-between, mediator. (Problem is Job isn't supplicating, he's kind of willing to acknowledge that he's alone, can't understand what's happening to him, and wants to die.
• Zophar: finally makes the accusation. You must have done something really really bad, Job.
• Job's reply: still defiant, but open to hearing from God, if he gets a minute to tell him where he messed up. his iniquities.

• cycles of speech and reply from Bildad, Zophar, Job increasingly aware of his isolation, lower than human in his friends eyes, and by the way: the wicked go unpunished all the time, Job offers more detailed accounting of his life, but still affirms a clear conscience.
• Elihu (Book 32, a later addition)

• Book 38: God answers Job out of the whirlwind: summary.

• What is the meaning of God's approval of Job's conduct and his disapproval of the friends?