Well, welcome. Welcome back. Hope y'all are staying warm. It's chilly out there. And it's a joy to be with you all, though, back in action and beginning our series on the Proverbs. And as we'll talk about the Proverbs, you know, you might have grown up in my charismatic younger years, the saying was, a proverb a day keeps the devil away. And even though, as Christians, we all recognize, in some respect, to one degree or another, the value of Proverbs, right? There's real wisdom in here to be found, no surprise. And yet, this first lesson, first time, as we begin this session, I wanna think about how we think about the Proverbs. and how we interpret and read the Proverbs. And so we're gonna do a little bit of both looking at some very common tropes and themes in Proverbs, and also just how to think big picture about these collections of sayings. Let me read the first seven verses for us, and then I'll pray and we'll get started. "'The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, "'to know wisdom and instruction, "'to understand words of insight, "'to receive instruction and wise dealing "'in righteousness, justice, and equity, "'to give prudence to the simple, "'knowledge and discretion to the youth. "'Let the wise hear and increase in learning, "'and the one who understands obtain guidance. "'To understand a proverb and a saying, "'the words of the wise and their riddles.'" The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for these dear saints here tonight. Lord, I pray that you would bless this time, both tonight and these coming weeks, as we look at the Proverbs, Lord, and how across time you have been giving your people wisdom. Lord, even as we seek to understand the Proverbs, might we greater understand the wisdom of God himself, Jesus Christ. Father, again, I thank you for your mercy and your grace to us and pray that you bless us and keep us safe in Christ's name, amen. Okay, so as we approach the Proverbs, one kind of interesting fact about it is that for probably, you know, for evangelicals, for Bible-believing Christians, they've remained a core part of our Bible for really since they've been a part of the scriptures, since they've been written. And yet for about 150, 200 years, they basically disappeared from biblical scholarship. And a lot that we're gonna see, it's because when we come to the Proverbs, we come to a collection of texts that really seem strange, even foreign to the rest of the Bible, right? There's a sense when you get to the Proverbs, you're like, eh, you know, I remember, has anyone ever read Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis? Great collection, read it if you haven't. But the first two books kind of follow this storyline, this pattern, and then you get to the third book, and you're like, did I pick up, is there another book called that hideous strength that I picked up on accident, because it was just so foreign, it doesn't seem to match up at all. And often it can seem like the Proverbs, and scholars have noted that, right? And for many years, critical scholars simply believed that not only Proverbs, but Job, and parts of Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, that they weren't even really part of the Bible. They were just this foreign imposition, either upon by a later editor, or that, you know, Israel at some point found these great sayings like, hey, these are pretty great. Let's just add them to our collection of texts. And just as a side point, right? There's an interesting note about that, right? For 150, 200 years, the top scholars in the world on Old Testament stuff were all German. And no surprise, Germans were a little tad anti-Semitic for a few hundred years, right? So even their anti-Semitism drove them to sort of like, eh, this is just kind of Jewish, weird stuff. It's not really the Bible. And even, right, not only is it kind of strange, but There are parts, we'll look at a little bit more in depth, but there are parts of Proverbs that really just almost parallel other ancient Near Eastern wisdom texts. So it seems a lot of times that Proverbs are just saying what Egyptians or other Canaanite peoples were saying. In one sense, it's actually a good thing because it's actually a proof for its authenticity, right? These weren't things that were written in 200 BC, but it actually adds credence, lends credence to the fact that Solomon probably wrote these as he was looking around the other nations. They were like, hey, these guys, you know, there's correspondence from the years 900 to 1400 BC. And another thing that makes it foreign or even seem a little strange with the rest of the Bible is it can seem like this is just worldly wisdom, right? Is this just sort of get rich? Is this, you know, what is it? Rich dad, poor dad? Is this chicken soup for the soul, how to plan my calendar? Is it this disparate collection of texts that can seem totally removed from salvation history? Or often, as it's sometimes read, even in evangelical circles, is that this was Old Testament wisdom that was works righteousness, but we've got New Testament wisdom that's not. And I hope to show that's an actually very dangerous and wrong way to think about the Proverbs. But as we start off, as we start thinking about the Proverbs, the Proverbs, very simply, is God's created wisdom given to his people that they might live a godly and holy life in this world. Right there, we should have no trouble saying that it's actually a really good thing that we have this book because guess what? As Paul said, as Paul in Hebrews, there's more to Christianity than simply justification by faith alone. There's a whole life of wisdom held within this book and Proverbs is a key part of that. So before we get into some of the ways of thinking about Proverbs, I wanna just briefly have some introductory stuff. So Proverbs, Who's the famous author of Proverbs? Solomon, right? The big guy, son of David, called the wisest man who ever lived. in Second Kings, and Solomon also is generally thought to have authored Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon as well. And so Solomon is kind of the primary author of this book, but we also have a number of other either somewhat contributors or compilers that are at least hinted at throughout the book, right? So if we get to, if you go to, let me see, Proverbs, 26, no, Proverbs 25 verse one. It says, these also are Proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah copied. So at some point, Hezekiah found these other collections of Solomonic Proverbs and added it to the collection. But also, if you go to the very end of Proverbs, we see a couple of foreign names. Proverbs 30 verse one, the words of Augur, son of Jacob. And we have no idea who Augur is, but one thing they do recognize is Augur is not a Hebrew name. So this is probably someone from a surrounding ancient Near Eastern country, society at the time. And then jump to Proverbs 31. The most, maybe the most famous Proverbs, besides Proverbs 1, 1 through 7, Proverbs 31, the words of King Lemuel, an oracle that his mother taught him. And what's fascinating about King Lemuel, you can go and look all up and down, 1 Kings through 2 Chronicles, and you're not gonna find a King Lemuel anywhere. And so this is some foreign king, non-Israelite king, whose wisdom is part of the people of God. And there's even... very clear parallels, like I said earlier, right? Proverbs 22, 17 through Proverbs 23, 11 are almost word for word paralleled in another collection of Egyptian sayings called the sayings of Amenemope. That's quite a fancy name, but it's an Egyptian collection of sayings that seems to have parallels with the book of Proverbs. And yet, what I'm trying to get us to recognize is that this book comes from a multitude of sources. So Solomon probably wrote most of them, but we seem to have proof or some sort of proof that he collected them from outside sources. But not only that, we actually have proverbs from outside sources in Augur and Lemuel. And so there's this sort of tension of this is wisdom to God's people and yet it's wisdom that is also common grace to all of God's created people, right? And that should both somewhat cause us to marvel at God's grace to all of his people. to all people, not all of his people, to all created man, that there is still this wisdom that is recognized by all people, right? But also, it should cause, it should not really surprise us that non-believers or people outside the covenant community might actually have wise things to say. That should not surprise us, because we just know it to be a fact. So just thinking about the authors and the collections, what I want to look at now just very briefly is these first four, first six verses, no, first seven verses that I read earlier of Proverbs. Because in these verses, we have the purpose of the Proverbs given, we have the intended audience of the Proverbs, and then we have what one author calls the epistemological foundation for the Proverbs. And epistemological is a fancy word for basically what do you have to know for sure before you can even begin to understand the full depth of these Proverbs, right? What is the understanding that is required for a full understanding of wisdom? So very briefly, right, the purpose of the Proverbs is given right there in the first four verses of Proverbs chapter one, to know wisdom and instruction. to understand words of insight, to receive instruction, both in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. So we have the purpose of Proverbs is to both import wisdom and these what they call words of insight, to give instruction to people. And in these verses, we see three different words used somewhat synonymously, but also they're building on each other. The first is that word wisdom, right? Wisdom, and the word for wisdom is the Hebrew word chokmah, chokmah. So think like hoka, the shoes, but add an M before the K and the A. And really this wisdom, when we think about both wisdom in Proverbs but across the Old Testament, wisdom is sort of an understanding for the order of things. How do things work on a broad scale, right? How do things fit together, you know, not necessarily in a mathematical way but in a you know, it's actually not good to, you know, slap your neighbor in the face, right? Because it's just the way it is. We might say wisdom is understanding, if you guys are in my Sunday school class, adult ed class, Jerry, if Jerry's here somewhere, my adult ed class, that wisdom is understanding the natural law that is built into God's creation. It's understand the natural law that's built into God's creation. And then we've got this second word, paralleling wisdom, instruction. Instructions, the Hebrew word is musar. And these are, across the Old Testament, these are in reference to lessons of life. These life lessons that are part of seeing how things work. but also just a, you know, when you, you know, when dads, when you sit down with your son, when they're about to get married and say, Hey, the key thing is communication, whatever, right? The key thing is communicate. You're giving this life lesson, imparting to this child, this your child about how things work. Um, And then we have the, where is it? In verse six, it's actually a little bit later, but verse six, to understand a proverb and a saying, right? And this word proverb, as the book is called, is the Hebrew word masal. And it really means exactly what? we mean by a proverb, right, is this short, pithy saying that is both ambiguous and yet gets to the point, right? Like a bird in a hand is worth two in a bush, right? It's short. For the longest time as a kid, I had no idea what that meant. Or, you know, glass houses sink ships. That's not it. What is it? Glass houses, what? That's right, yeah, don't throw stone in glass houses. Sorry, there's a movie where a guy's always confusing Proverbs and that's what he says, is glass houses sink ships. And I just did the same thing, how about that? But it's these, so these short pithy sayings, so we see in Proverbs, right, it's this communication of wisdom and life lessons through these short pithy sayings. And really, we think about wisdom both in our time, but even in the Old Testament, wisdom is this thing that is only acquired in experience through life, right? That it is acquired, at least initially, just through experience. And I only have a 15-month-old, so I can't really say this. fully, like many of you can in this room, but you tell your children a hundred times about something, and often it's not until they experience it that they really get it. I mean, my parents, for all my life, I was raised on Dave Ramsey. I'm a Dave Ramsey boy through and through. And it wasn't until I was 18 and I had a negative $500 bank account that I was like, oh wow, budgeting is actually really key. This is really important. And that's why, and that's where we see the second, the intended audience of a proverb. And he says, And he says right there in verse four, to give prudence to the simple, right? Knowledge and discretion to the youth. And that's sort of, so the intended audience, at least for the fullness of Proverbs is, are the young people, the naive, generally youth who really don't have an understanding of the way the world works and don't have the experience that you as parents have. And so this whole thing, the whole book of Proverbs is couched, at least the first 10 chapters and it changes a little bit, but it's this sort of, you almost get the sense of this is a conversation between a father and a son, a mother and a daughter at the dinner table, right? This is them passing on their wisdom through and through. And I think that again, that should, That should impact how we interpret Proverbs that, again, these are not rules or laws like we think of the law of gravity, right? When I drop this pen, it's gonna drop all the time, 100% of the time, right? But this is fatherly wisdom, fatherly care that God is giving to us, right? That he is seeking for us to learn and grow in wisdom. But as we see, it also is not the same as the law of gravity in that it doesn't always work out the way Proverbs says it does. Wicked people flourish all the time. Righteous people have hard, suffering lives. And we'll talk about that a little bit. But it's this, the posture of the whole book of Proverbs is one of a father to a son, father to a daughter, mother to a child. And we should hear that, right? And notice too that verse five, let the wise hear and increase in learning and the one who understands obtain guidance. So even though the primary audience of Proverbs are the youth, the simple, the naive, It's also for everybody. Hey, even if you think you're the cat's pajamas, well you're probably not that wise if you think you're the cat's pajamas, but even if you've seen a lot of stuff in your life and you have a very clear understanding for the way the world works, there's still, you are constantly seeking to grow in wisdom. to gain guidance. And then lastly, just think, I wanna touch briefly on what I call the epistemological foundation, right? The thing that is for true wisdom to be had, you have to have this. And that is verse seven, right? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And this is what clarifies maybe a little bit what I said earlier, that the world out there has a lot of common grace insights and wisdom for us to understand and see, right? I mean, non-believers make great financial analysts. Just because they don't believe in Jesus doesn't somehow make them less able to read the stock market. And sometimes we listen to what they say. But they're never going to know the true giver of wisdom. And so they're never really gonna have wisdom. The wisdom that they have is this sort of temporary partial thing. They never have the true thing. But God still gives wisdom to them. But yet the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And the thing we're gonna see over and over again, but particularly by the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, at least what it means that it's most simple is that for you to truly be a wise person, you have to recognize that you are not in control. The beginning of wisdom is recognizing that there is only one God and you are not him. Right? And that plays into how every single proverb almost, right? I mean, the fool or the man plans his steps, but the Lord guides his ways. We can do a lot of planning, can act very wisely in a lot of ways, but God is the one who ultimately holds the keys to all of creation. And that should, again, that is putting us in this posture of, hey, I'm doing, Lord, I'm seeking to abide by your wisdom, but I recognize that even if I do this to the letter, things still may go wrong because I am not the one in control. God is. Any questions about that before we kind of do a brief run through on some things? Now, okay, so let's, so just a quick look at the whole book of Proverbs. So very simply, the Proverbs are divided into two sections, right? Proverbs 1 through 9, which is sort of this extended, parable of the search for wisdom. And that's what, this is where we see a lot of Lady Wisdom versus Lady Folly, right? But it's kind of this whole one through nine kind of follows this whole, it's almost like a, you know, a medieval, like Canterbury tale or something, right? Nine chapters, it kind of follows this whole story of Lady Folly and Lady Wisdom. And then in chapter 10, that's when we really start this just almost barrage of just short sayings with seemingly without rhyme or reason. It's just this, this, this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah So the whole book is how you grab hold of Lady Wisdom and turn away from Lady Folly. That's kind of the whole thing. And yet again, as we think about Proverbs, what I really want to focus on now for the last little bit of our time tonight is these random, so-called random disparate collection of sayings that we see in 10 through 31. And so, As we think about these collections of short sayings, you know, and again, just to kind of give you a sense of the randomness, or so-called randomness. 10, one, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. Okay, so we had wise son, father, foolish son, mother, then we're on to righteousness. Then the Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. So even just in four verses, we see they're kind of covering everything. There doesn't seem to be any connection. And that's what makes some of it hard to read, is that it seems to always be without context. And it hardly ever seems to provide keys to really understanding it. And again, just as I just said, the context is always building off Proverbs one through nine. Proverbs 1-9, as one author says, is the prism through which we view Proverbs 10-31. It's the thing that should always, if you wanna really understand how to read the Proverbs, read Proverbs 1-9, and then read it again. and then read it again, and then go read Proverbs 10 through 31. Again, because Proverbs 10 through 31 are those short pithy sayings that guide us on how we take hold of lady wisdom and run away from lady folly. The second thing as we read this, and I mentioned this early on, right, that a lot of Proverbs 10 through 31 particularly just sounds like this sort of common worldly wisdom. And I say worldly in like, you know, it's like look to the aunt. look to the sluggard, look to the lion, all this stuff. And so is this just sort of secular? wisdom that anyone can understand. And in one sense, you know, it's amazing. It really, it should actually cause us to awe, again, as I said, that God's wisdom that gives to his people is actually built into nature, and that there are non-believers who can still see it. There's a guy named Jonathan Haidt, who's a sociologist at, he was at UPenn, now he's at NYU. And he wrote a bunch of books. He wrote that book, Coddling of the American Mind. Some of y'all may have read. He's got a great book called The Righteous Mind. And he's a secular Jew, you know, very, very smart, very intelligent, NYU circles. But he even said, you know, as I went back, he was doing this thing on wisdom, and he said, I went back and read the Proverbs. And then he, you know, mentioned all these other religious wisdom texts. He's like, it's amazing that all this stuff bears up in sociological research, right? And there's this comportment to reality that the Proverbs offer that many people can see. But again, it's that fear of the Lord that makes it true wisdom. But also, While wisdom is revealed differently than the story of salvation, right? Wisdom is revealed through creation, through God's glory. Story of salvation is revealed immediately through God in the story of redemption. That it's not this like, there's not this hard contrast between here's the story of redemption and here's created wisdom, right? So, you know, thinking a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Non-believers would be like, yeah, I'd rather have my son be wise than him doing stupid things. I mean, no one, I'm sure there may be somebody out there, but generally no one is gonna disagree with that statement. But what we have to recognize is that salvation and creation are not these totally removed things. In fact, we would even say that part of salvation is God restoring things as they were when he first spoke all things into existence. So as we are on the pathway to salvation in Jesus Christ, it would only make sense that God is kind of trying to get us to point back, like, see, this is the way the world works. Trying to restore in us the way that things were at the beginning. And even, right, as, as we see in Genesis 1 through 3, that salvation and creation are intimately connected. Salvation and creation are intimately connected because, if you're in my Sunday school class, we talked about this a little bit, but what was the thing promised to Adam at creation if he were to obey? Life, the tree of life. And then what is God giving to us at the very end of salvation history? The tree of life, right? So the restoration, salvation is at least nothing less than the restoration of creation. So we don't want to put these hard barriers between, eh, that's just created, that's just creation wisdom, but I've got salvation stuff. Because it's not mutually exclusive. Like, does that make sense? I feel like that's a, it's a very, I think it's an important point, but it can be a hard point to understand. And so that's that, right? And here's what we want to say, that even if it is, quote unquote, secular wisdom, right? And sometimes we use scare quotes around secular. As St. Augustine famously said, all truth is God's truth. All wisdom is God's wisdom. So we should be ready to accept when people are right about things. And I think Proverbs shows that. So then, Lastly, just one thing that makes Proverbs challenging, as I mentioned earlier, is it can sometimes seem like Proverbs are these like 100% guaranteed rules for life, right? That people treat them as like the recipe for a surefire success for life. And the way people, one way to phrase it, right, are Proverbs universal statements? are Proverbs universally 100% true at all times? And some people say yes, they are, but because of X, Y, or Z, it doesn't always work out, which ironically just makes it a not universal statement. But really, if you take Proverbs to be a 100% universally true statement, what are you in danger of falling into? Anyone wanna guess? I feel like I may have heard someone whisper it over here. Prosperity gospel, right? You do this, God's gonna bless you, right? You be righteous enough and God's gonna make you rich. And so there's this sort of balance, right? Recognize, and really, you know, it's a, God knew what he was doing when he gave us the wisdom literature because he turned from Proverbs and then what's the next book? Ecclesiastes, same author, And Solomon is saying, hey, sometimes the wicked thrive and the good man dies. Sometimes life is really hard. And so we need to recognize that the Proverbs, these are not 100% always guaranteed in this life, because here's what we often forget, we live in a sinful, broken world, right? I mean, someone can be a very godly and righteous man, Give 50%, you know, whatever, do everything right, and a hurricane comes and destroys everything he owns, right? You can do everything right with your child. both according to Scripture and the best Christian wisdom out there, and they wander off into whatever thing that they do, right? And so we don't want to take it as this 100%, you know, this will always happen. But one thing we do want to recognize, and I really appreciate what one guy named Richard Belcher said, that for now, it is only dependently true, right? It is dependently true that the righteous man will thrive. All things being equal, generally the righteous man thrives. It's just when we look at the world. But one day, the Proverbs will be 100% universally true. When all of creation is restored, it will always be the case that the righteous man flourishes 100%. And again, I think that's a very key point for how we read the Proverbs is this is, as we read the Proverbs, we are not making a deal with God. Like, okay, God, I do these weird things that you're telling me to do. I'll follow your rules, but just make sure I have a good life. That's not the way it works. In a sinful broken world, again, that is not having the fear of the Lord. Because if you read the Proverbs as a 100% universal statement, it is, thank goodness I've got the guidebook for how to do all these things, right? Thank goodness, or another way to phrase it, thank goodness I'm in control. Finally, I'm in control. And that's not the fear of the Lord, right? Remember, fear of the Lord is recognizing that only God is in control. And again, and what's the book, two books before Proverbs? Job, right? This righteous man, no one is like Job. Look at this awesome guy. And for a long time, things don't go well with him, right? So even, and really, I think that's why I can say in confidence that these are not, because the Bible is full of other examples where the righteous man does not flourish in ways that we would think about flourishing. Okay, so very briefly, Let's see if I can do this. I wanna think about just a couple of ways, things that define Proverbs, and it'll come up again and again as we look at different topics. And just know, we're not gonna do this verse by verse everywhere, it's not gonna be, we're gonna be in Proverbs for the next four years, looking at every single one. But we're gonna be looking at sort of topically. So what does Proverbs have to say about our speech? What does Proverbs have to say about parenting? Blah, blah, blah, all across the board. We'll take a few sort of highlights from the book. But one thing we're gonna see again and again across Proverbs, as I've already said, is this terseness, this very pithy, short sayings that can sometimes make you wonder, what is this actually trying to say, right? And here's a few people, many people note this, so it's not my idea, but one thing about the Proverbs and its terseness, even I might say ambiguity, is trying to push us to is that one, as I said, these things show themselves to be true in experience, right? So semi-ambiguous statements become less ambiguous as you have more and more experience in life. But second, that these are intended for meditation, right? It's not just, you know, when a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Boom, done, got that one. But really stopping and thinking, first off, when a man's ways please the Lord, what does that look like? How does a man's way please the Lord? And then making peace with his enemies. We should pause when we read these really short statements and meditate on them. But then lastly, this, again, I say ambiguity again with scare quotes because I don't think God is somehow being ambiguous, but it can be hard for us to interpret. The third thing that this terseness pushes us to is learning this in community, right? That Proverbs are meant to be deciphered and discussed in community. That we need each other, right? So again, going back, when a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him, right? Nate, not that Nate has a lot of enemies, right? But Nate has one way, we all hate you. Nate has one way of learning how to make peace with his enemies, right? I have my way. I have experiences that Nate doesn't have on that. Nate has experience. All of you guys have experiences of making peace with enemies that I don't have. And so learning from one another what that looks like in practice. But not only terseness, right, but a big thing is imagery. Right? Proverbs are filled with, and that's what makes, even in our own language, this imagery that makes Proverbs so memorable, is this very vivid imagery. Again, back to it, glass houses sink ships, right? Or again, burn the hand that's worth two in the bush. It's this vivid image that is pushing you to see the lesson behind it. And that's everywhere in Proverbs. And then lastly, just to look very briefly at this, and many of y'all probably heard this before, but a huge part of just not only the Proverbs, but any Hebrew poetry, so Psalms, much of the Prophets, a huge part of poetry, but especially the Proverbs here, is this parallelism. So both in couplets, so you may have one verse that are paralleling each other. You may have very long sections. So two, three, four verses that are paralleling each other. And the Proverbs make frequent use of this parallelism. And just three basic types that are really hard to, they're not always like, no, this is this, this is that, right? They kind of meld together. But just to help us understand, the first is called synonymous parallelism. Right, synonymous parallelism. So just first off, Proverbs 10. And this is often a, you know, like a comparison like this, so that if then this, so Proverbs 10, 26, like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the slugger to those who sent him, right? So we actually have kind of three modes of parallelism. Vinegar to the teeth, smoke to the eyes. Saying the same thing, but in two different, you know, one's about vinegar in the mouth, one's about smoking the eyes, but they're saying the same thing, this caustic thing. And then the parallel in the second line of the couplet, so is the slugger to those who sent him, right? So just as vinegar is caustic to the mouth and smoke is caustic to the eyes, a slugger is caustic to people who actually want him to work, right? So Synonymous Parallelism is one line says something, second line says something a little different, but basically the same thing, right? The second type of parallelism is what's called, well, let me say this actually. And this can actually, well, I was gonna say, it said antithetical parallelism, but then I said, let me go back for a second, sorry. So thinking about this parallelism, No, that's later on, I'm sorry. So let's jump to antithetical parallelism. Antithetical parallelism. And so synonymous is, it's saying the same thing in two different ways. Antithetical parallelism is trying to communicate one idea by two contrasting ideas, right? So going back to Proverbs 10. Proverbs 10. that verse I read early on, right? A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother, right? So you obviously, on the one hand this, on the other hand that, right? And the one message trying to be communicated seemingly in Proverbs 10.1 is, know, be wise. That's very simple. But it's doing it by also saying, hey, if you're a foolish, you're making your mother sorrowful. Right? So these antithetical saying, getting it to conflicting ideas, but saying one message. And the last one, And this one is kind of probably the most common, but it's called synthetic parallelism, synthetic parallelism. And you know, you think of a synthesis, you've got one idea here, one idea here, and they come together to sort of communicate something together. So again, a synonymous is basically saying the same thing twice. from line one to line two. Antithetical is saying two contrasting ideas to communicate one message. Synthetic parallelism is almost two completely different things that they bring together to communicate one idea. So 10.3, right, we see this in a couplet. So two lines in 10.3, the Lord does not let the righteous go hungry. but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. So it's taking these two related but different ideas of God not letting the righteous go hungry and thwarting the craving of the wicked to say, God is going to provide for you. God is going to care for you. But it can also, we can see this develop across what seems to be contrasting statements. So just very briefly, and as we end, turn to Proverbs 26, four through five. And this is kind of one of the most famous examples of both the confusion around Proverbs, but also a good example of how we ought to read the Proverbs. So Proverbs 26, four through five. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Right, so a lot of people just say like, see these people are idiots. They just contradicted themselves. Literally the next verse. And yet notice in this synthetic, because it is saying two different things. First line is saying answer not a fool according to his folly. Line three is saying answer not a fool according to his folly. but, or answer a fool according to his folly. But the synthesis comes in lines two and four, right? So look, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. So, hey, there are times when a fool is talking and the only way you're gonna be able to engage them is if you fall into the same stupidity as him, right? The same nonsense that he's talking about. And then line four, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. And there are other times when if a fool is puffed up on himself, particularly in a public area, you have to say, no, no, no, that's not right. Let's just be very clear, right? And so again, the Proverbs are showing us, A, we need wisdom to discern when we should answer a fool and when we should not answer a fool. But it's using these two seemingly contradictory statements, so we might even call it a paradoxical parallelism, but it is bringing them together to show us, not only, like I said, the wisdom, but how every situation is different. There is no one fit all, never answer a fool. and there is no one fit all, always answer a fool. But there are, it's different times and measures. So again, just as we close, Proverbs really are, while we might say that there is wisdom available in the created world, Proverbs is God giving us wisdom as the giver of wisdom that we might walk a righteous and godly life before him. As his people, and we need to recognize what a blessing that is, to be able to be given guidance on how to walk a holy and righteous life. I know we're kind of hitting time, but any questions or comments? Cool, next week we're gonna talk briefly about the theology of Proverbs.