I had this as John at the Bible Project and today on the podcast we continue a conversation

learning how to read books in the Bible called the Wisdom Books.

Today we're looking at one of those books, the Book of Proverbs.

Proverbs is a very approachable book.

It's full of wise sayings that you can pick and choose from.

The Proverbs and all the books in the Wisdom literature do much more.

They're developing an important theme central to the story of the Bible.

The isolation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job from the rest of the Old Testament doesn't

allow you to see the full set of relationships.

The Book of Proverbs is designed as this retroflection on Genesis 1-3.

That you go back and you look and you say, oh, wow.

I can now see new things in Genesis 1-3 through the lens of the Proverbs that were there

all along just waiting to be activated.

Proverbs isn't just a nice collection of wise sayings.

It's continuing the narrative of Adam and Eve and their quest to rule the world with wisdom.

The misguided quest for wisdom ends up with humans divided with each other and separated

from God, creating by their own wisdom, pain and hurt and violence and death in the world.

And it leaves unrealized the ideal of the two of them united in love, vulnerability, co-ruling

in the land of abundance, living by God's commands and wisdom.

In Genesis 2, the humans have a choice to choose life or choose death.

In Proverbs, we get a parallel but new image.

So it gives you the wise woman, the foolish woman, the wise man and the foolish man and

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