The Bible Study Podcast, episode 462. Today, the Bible Study podcast starts a study of the book of Proverbs.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We're going to try something different. It was requested by one of the listeners to start a, well, to do a study of the book of Proverbs.

We're going to start that today. I don't know exactly how this is going to go. Proverbs. It's a little harder to do a lesson on because it's not a narrative book. As we were doing, for instance, the most recent

study on the book of Matthew, it follows a story. It tells a story, and so that's a little easier.

Proverbs are, by their nature, tend to be a two-line verse. And so this is a collection of these things. And you know Proverbs. A bird in the hand

beats two in the bush. That's not a biblical proverb, but it is one of those that is familiar.

And that's what this book is. So it's a book about wisdom, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

But it might be a little difficult to do one episode per chapter and do 31 episodes

on the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is a book that you can read in a month. If it's a 31-day

month, then you read only one chapter per day. These are predominantly proverbs by Solomon, King Solomon, and you may remember the stories of Solomon and his wisdom.

And the most memorable story that is told is Solomon was brought two women who had had babies, and one of them had died.

And one of the women said when her friend's baby or when this other woman's baby had died in the middle of the night,

the woman had switched babies so that she woke up with a dead baby.

It was a terrible story.

But Solomon has to decide which woman is telling the truth.

One says it's the live baby is mine and the dead baby is hers,

and the other one says the opposite. He says, bring a sword, we'll cut the baby in two,

and give half to each woman. And one woman says, fine, that works just fine. And the other one says,

no, whatever you do, don't do that. Give the baby to her. And Solomon says, you're the real mother.

And so he was known for his wisdom, and people came all over the world from it. And a lot of that

gets here in the book of Proverbs. And it starts like this. The Proverbs of Solomon's son of David,

King of Israel, for gaining wisdom and instruction,

...