Day 20
A full dose of wisdom today. Having never read Proverbs in its entirety, my suspicions were correct. It is a devotional book. There are hundreds (over 400) wise sayings contained in this book. I hesitated to write down all of my favorites, though some definitely resonated with me, especially as they relate to 2021. What’s interesting to note is that it does feel like several books of wisdom smashed together. The heart of Proverbs are chapters 10 to 22 — as they really are just a list of 1-2 liners. Everything before and after those chapters has a different tone. The first 9 chapters has an unusual obsession with prostitutes and seductive women, which feels very peculiar to modern ears. I wonder how those chapters would resonate if they were gender neutral. Anyway, I plan to revisit this book as there was a lot that had me muttering “right on” as I read it.
Ecclesiastes is familiar to me. My mentor, the late Rev. Ed Searl, wrote a book on it and used it often in his preaching. He saw it as a deeply humanist book with wisdom for our time. Granted, the writer of Ecclesiastes is taking on a position of privilege here. Supposedly, the author is King Solomon — someone with great wealth and power, and so he reflects on his life. I appreciate that the author is up front: All his power and wealth are for nought. Just like the Psalms that touched upon this, Ecclesiastes is an existential crisis on paper. Sure, God is present in the text, but in no way is it a means to garner favor or forgiveness. This dawned on me today reading Ecclesiastes: Not once up to this point has any mention of death included an afterlife. Yeah, you read that right, there is no assured afterlife in these texts thus far. Sheol is the grave. Period. And Ecclesiastes makes it clear that everyone and everything returns to the grave. Dust to dust. Chew on that for a while.
Ending with Song of Solomon after a heap of sometimes awkward wisdom and an existential crisis was wonderful. This is the second book of the Bible that makes zero mentions of God. Not one. Nada. Zip. The first being the book of Esther. You can interpret it as a symbolic story about God or just read it as it is: a spicy love song. I think it can be both/and. The mystics of any religious community speak of deep intimacy with the divine – bordering on sexual love. Just look at Rumi, Hafiz, or Iqbal of the Sufi tradition. Instead, like all of these books, I read it as a means to understand our humanity as expressed in this book. Why did they keep this book in the canon? Was it to remember that love is just as divine as the rest? I like to think so.
One Word for Proverbs: Abundant
One Word for Ecclesiastes: Ponderous
One Word for Song of Solomon: Ecstatic
Parts of the Texts That Stayed With me
- Prov 1, Importance of Truth. I feel like every so called Christian nationalist should be given this chapter as it makes it plain the difference between truth and foolishness. In fact, an inordinate amount of this book is spent decrying the foolish and lazy. Trumpism and conspiracy theories are just that. Foolish and lazy.
- Prov 3:13, Feminine Wisdom. Wisdom comes up a lot in this book and, well, Wisdom is a woman! And she is praised alongside the divine! Love it. (And it is an interesting contrast to the rambling about prostitutes, which leads me to believe those were admonitions against temple prostitutes — as with the surrounding tribes. But I don’t know that for certain.)
- Prov 14:31, Centering the Poor. Again, this book (the entire Bible) advocates for the poor and the oppressed.
- Eccl 2, Midlife Crisis. Solomon states all he has and has done…and it’s never enough. What is the point of life, he wonders?
- Eccl 3:20-21, What Afterlife? As stated above, there is no assurance of an afterlife, but still trust in God. I love this. It challenges the notion that believing in God requires an afterlife.
- Eccl 11:8, Life is Short…so enjoy it. Because it really is.
- Song 1, Furniture Details. “Our couch is green…” is a hilarious detail to include here. It comes after the beloved is described as being like a mare amongst Pharaoh’s chariots and a bag of myrrh between the breasts.
- Song 4:2, Buy Me a Drink First. I don’t know about you, but if my teeth were described as “like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing…” I’d be smitten. I guess that was hot stuff then.
- Song 5:1, Enjoy Life! I love this random little cluster of lines: “I come to my garden, my sister, my bride, I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love.”
This post is part of a lager series where I read the entirety of Hebrew & Christian scriptures in 45 days. Take a look a the original post for more info, as well as links to other reflections on this journey.