There are three books in the Bible that have come to be called the wisdom literature: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. All these books are addressing the same set of questions: What kind of world are we living in, and what does it look like to live well in this world? So, how to be good at life? Yeah! So, each of these books tackles these questions from a unique perspective, and it's important to understand all of them to get a fully biblical perspective on the good life. So, as a thought experiment, you could actually imagine each of these books as a person. So, Proverbs would be like this brilliant young teacher, and Ecclesiastes the sharp middle-aged critic, and Job would be the weathered old man who's seen a lot in his day. We're gonna start by meeting the book of Proverbs, the brilliant teacher. And she's not just smart; she's smart about everything: work, relationships, sex, spirituality. She has incredible insights, things you would see on your own. Yeah! She would be the perfect friend to have around when you need really specific advice.

So what makes her so smart? Well! Proverbs can see things that most people don't see. She believes that there is an invisible creative force in the universe that can guide people and how they should live. You can't see it just like you can't see gravity, but it affects everything that we do. So what's this force? In Hebrew, it's called chokma, and it's usually translated into English as wisdom. It's an attribute of God that God used to create the world, and hokmah has been woven into the fabric of things and how they work. So wherever people are making good, just, or wise decisions, they are tapping into chokma, and whenever someone is making a bad decision, they're working against chokma. Right! Or as it says in Proverbs chapter one, The waywardness of fools will destroy them, but the one who listens to wisdom lives in security. So it's like a moral law of the universe. Yeah! It's a cause-effect pattern, and no one can escape.

and Proverbs personifies all of this as a woman. Yeah! Lady wisdom. Right! She runs around the earth, calling out, making herself available to anyone who's willing to listen to her and to learn, which leads to the second thing Proverbs believes: that anyone can access and interact with wisdom and use it to make a beautiful life for yourself or others. You can create with it like a designer. Yes, in fact, chokma in Hebrew isn't simply intellectual knowledge. The word is also used to describe the skilled artisan who excels at their craft, like woodworking or stonemason. So, you show you possess chokma when you put it to work and develop the skill of making a good life. OK! That makes sense. So, let's do this. Let's go find some wisdom. Before you do, Proverbs has one more really important thing to consider: chokma isn't some impersonal force; it's an attribute of God himself. And so, in Hebrew thought, your journey to becoming wise has to begin with what Proverbs called the Fear of the Lord.

It's this healthy respect for God's definition of good and evil, and true wisdom means learning those boundary lines and not crossing them. Now, all those ideas you just unpacked are in chapters one through nine in Proverbs, but when I think of the book of Proverbs, I think of the collection of sayings, the Proverbs themselves. Tell me about those. Yeah! Those are what you find in chapters ten onto the end of the book. It's a collection of hundreds and hundreds of Proverbs about any and all aspects of life, and chokma gets applied to them, resulting in this wise guidance to help you find a path toward success in no matter what you do. If I designed my life with these sayings, life is gonna be good. Yeah! Or if Proverbs puts it, it'll give health to your bones, prosperity, a long rich life, which is a really big claim, but you can see how it's often the case. Wise people, they tend to do better; things usually work out well for them in life.

and so that is the promise and the wisdom of the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is really beautiful, but if we take a step back, some people would argue it's a little too simplistic, 'cause sometimes horrible things happened to really wise people, and sometimes foolish people get rewarded. It doesn't always work the way we think it should work. That's right, which is why we need to go and listen to our next wise friend, Ecclesiastes the critic, because he's wrestled with that very problem, and he's going to push us further in our journey to find the Good Life. Hey guys! Thank you for watching the Bible project. You can find a lot more videos like this one on our YouTube channel. We believe the Bible is a unified story that all leads to Jesus and has profound wisdom for the modern world. So we're making videos about key themes that run throughout the whole storyline of the Bible. We also make videos that unpack different books of the Bible, looking at its literary structure, the themes of that book, kind of like the one you just watched on Proverbs.

We've got a lot more videos to do and a few more series that we want to do as well. The Bible project is totally supported by you guys, and thank you so much for all that you're doing. We want to make this whole video library available for free to anyone, anywhere, and that's because of you guys giving one-time gifts, or you can sign up to become monthly supporters as well. On our website, you could download full-resolution videos, you could download posters, and study guides, and other things. It's all for free on jointheBibleproject.com. Thank you, guys.

The Book of Proverbs • What It Teaches About Being Good at Life

BibleProject creates free resources to help you experience the Bible. Everything we make is funded by generous supporters around the world. You can see our entire library of videos, podcasts, classes, check out our other resources, and give at bibleproject.com.

You can find us elsewhere:

BibleProject Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BibleProjectPodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bibleproject
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebibleproject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bibleproject
Download our App: https://bibleproject.com/app/

Do you speak another language? Check out our videos and reading plans in over 50 other languages at bibleproject.com/languages



The Book of Proverbs • What It Teaches About Being Good at Life

Scripts