The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15 and The Book of Proverbs

Currents in Theology and Mission, June, 2007 by Ralph W. Klein

The Book of Proverbs. Chapters 1-15 and The Book of Proverbs. Chapters 15-31. By Bruce K. Waltke (Eerdmans, $50 each volume). This massive, nearly 1,300-page commentary displays the erudition, diligence, and extensive knowledge of Hebrew for which W. is well known. It also shows his evangelical/conservative stance that insists that Solomon is the author of at least chapters 1-29.

W. devotes seventy pages to the theology of Proverbs and forty to bibliography. The commentary interprets individual proverbs all by themselves and also as part of the various collections in the book. W. is quite knowledgeable about wisdom in the Ancient Near East and has certainly read very widely in the secondary literature, though he finds "fundamentalistic" historical criticism (= mainstream contemporary scholarship) as rigid as theological fundamentalism. While I do not subscribe to his isagogical conclusions, I found on page after page well-argued and often quite fresh interpretations. One of the most debated verses in the book is Prov 8:30 "I [wisdom] was beside him [God], like a master worker" (NRSV). W. devotes four pages to this crux and comes up with a rather bland "And I was beside him constantly." The overlap in the titles of the two volumes stems from the fact that the first twenty-nine verses of chap. 15 are in the first volume and the last four verses are in the second. RWK