It’s December 29, 2025, and I realize I haven’t written at all on this blog in 2025. Largely this was because 2025 was the year of my now defended dissertation. Perhaps I’ll write about my PhD experiences later, but for now I wanted to post something this year.
I recently reread Proverbs in my attempt to get through the Bible in its original languages a second time (estimated completion August 2026, for 3 years this time instead of 5). I think that’s the first time I’ve reread Proverbs since 2020 or 2021. So much has changed in that time.
Between starting a PhD, becoming a parent, moving into a new denomination, receiving multiple neuropsychological diagnoses, teaching various classes, writing a dissertation, and finishing a PhD, a lot has changed. Perhaps most importantly for my rereading of Proverbs, however, I read a bunch (perhaps too much) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which put me onto starting Nietzche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, listening to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason on audio book, and in turn listening to about a dozen ancient Greek works including plays, Plato’s Republic and various other dialogs, and later listening to David Bentley Hart’s All Things Are Full of Gods. The reading and the listening added up to a bunch of philosophical growth (not maturity or completion by any means) that I did not have last time I read Proverbs, and that changed the experience of reading for me significantly.
I realized that I had unconsciously grown to dislike Proverbs. But the Proverbs that I disliked was not the Mishlei of the Hebrew Bible, nor the Proverbs of our English Bible, but Proverbs as read and interpreted through the lens of a chartered accountant or an ACBC certified biblical counselor: Flat. Boring. Uninspired. Oscillating between legalistic and meaninglessly gnomic. Christless. Oppressive to the spiritually struggling. Anti-intellectual. Very mid-20th century conservative American evangelical, in all the most putrid ways. Let the reader understand.
Having gained some experience of reading different philosophies, I was struck by a different experience of Proverbs this time. I’m going to drop a couple broad thoughts here, not to actually get into detailed interpretation of Proverbs, but to provide food for thought in future rereading.
Have we overplayed the earthiness of Proverbs?
I am going to very sloppily cite no sources in support of my next statement. In the significant general Old Testament readings I’ve done in my graduate studies, I distinctly remember that many authors gesture in the direction that Hebrew philosophy (as in Proverbs, for example) has a distinctly earthy tone, emphasizing daily life and creation, etc., etc. On any surface level of Proverbs I see what they’re getting at, and I’m not denying it. But perhaps we’ve underrated the value of ancient Jewish philosophers. When I go read other philosophy now, I’m struck by how much philosophy also heavily uses daily life examples, earthy or creational imagery, aphoristic imagery, etc., albeit differently than Proverbs. The use of dialogs and allegories and personae features heavily. I am particularly indebted for Deleuze and Guattari in What Is Philosophy? arguing that for the Greeks, philosophy is (based on its etymology), friendship with wisdom. Particularly in conjunction with their notion of conceptual personae, this rather evocatively figures philosophy as an interpersonal relationship (wisdom as personal). This context made my listening to extended Greek stuff and to David Bentley Hart much more manageable. Those weren’t easy reads or listens. What do we find when we read Proverbs? Wisdom personified. Lady Wisdom. Shouldn’t this invite us to extend the more creative, playful, allegorical approach of philosophy further? Are there other conceptual personae to explore? Why, of course there are!
Maybe passages about the “Alien Woman” aren’t just gratuitous sexual passages about adultery
I know this may seem like a shocking, sacrilegious idea to many evangelicals. Wisdom literature is generally seen as an explanation of how to live out Torah daily. I think the Seventh Commandment is pretty clear; I’m not sure why extended poetic chapters are really necessary to explain the dangers of physical adultery or sleeping with sex workers. And while, yes, I do think they partly serve that purpose, I think limiting these passages to that single purpose misses the bigger picture of a contrast throughout the book that contrasts Lady Wisdom, who should be sought, desired, and acquired (or more provocatively, possibly made) at any cost. The “alien woman” or “feminine foreigner,” often reduced to a seductress, seems to stand in contrast to Lady Wisdom.
“For YHWH gives Wisdom, from his mouth comes Knowledge and Understanding”
Prov 2:6“To deliver you from the Alien Woman, from the Feminine Foreigner of flattering words”
Prov 2:17“Say to Wisdom, ‘You are my Sister,’ and greet Understanding as a friend,
To keep you from the Alien Woman, from the Feminine Foreigner of flattering words.”
Prov 7:4–5
The last of these, of course, is followed by a famous scene of a young simpleton being led off by an adulterous woman, but Proverbs 8 is about Lady Wisdom! The whole pair of chapters contrasts the two women, the two Conceptual Personae, again!
“I saw one among the simple, I noticed among the young men a lad without a chest (lit., heart)…
And behold, a Woman greeted him, dressed as a sex worker and guarded of heart.”
Prov 7:7, 10“Doesn’t Wisdom call out, and Understanding raise her voice?…
‘Unto you, oh men, I call out, and unto you, oh humanity, I raise my voice!'”
Prov 8:1, 4
Basically, such a contrast would emphasize that humanity is to pursue after Lady Wisdom, and not unto foreign (sensuous?) pleasures. There’s almost a sense of the spiritual versus the physical in comparing Wisdom and the Alien Woman. While, yes, adultery is bad, and these passages often point out why, there is definitely much more going on. There’s so much more for the careful reader to find, things both old and new for the well trained Scribe to bring out from this treasury.
I also think it’s quite liberating to realize this. The positive female role models in Proverbs on a surface reading are sadly rather rare (more on them later). A fast reading could yield a misogynistic misreading quite easily. I sadly suspect this has often happened in churches. Pointing out there’s more than adultery going on in these passages doesn’t complete solve the problematic tendencies toward misogynistic misreadings, but at least we have a first step in that direction. More importantly, the book does not limit its description of the dangers of the Alien or Foreign to the Female:
“Take his garment, since he offered it as collateral for an Alien…”
Prov 20:16
Of course, that raises the issue of chauvinism against foreigners, but I’ll let that dog lie for now.
The Relationship with Wisdom We Pursue of One of Beauty and Love
I noticed a couple weird bits in how Lady Wisdom’s relationship to YHWH is described in Proverbs 8. I do not have all the theological issues sorted yet, but I generally think the historic church reading of Christ as figured in Lady Wisdom is directionally correct for Christian reading. What I’m about to point out may seem a little strange in that context, but those problems are beyond scope for now.
The relationship between God and Wisdom seems to be one of playful loving joy.
“I was a trusted friend at his side,
I was delightful day by day,
Playing in his presence all the time,
Playing in his whole world,
And my delight was in humanity.”
Prov 8:30–31
This word I translated here as play is sometimes used of mockery or joking, as in the jesting against the captured Samson in Judges, but is also used of rejoicing and play in a more positive sense, as of children. It’s also closely related to the word that describes whatever Isaac was doing with Rebekah when Abimelech saw and realized that Rebekah was not Isaac’s sister. It’s a playful word, and not one I would have associated with my stodgier idea of wisdom inherited from accountants and dispensational fundamentalists. By setting “play” next to “delight” as well, what we’re looking at is childlike joy animated by love of true beauty. Is this what the Christian life of wisdom, the Christian life of the mind should look like?
The imagery here grips me after having listened and read so much of the philosophical stuff I’ve slogged through in the past couple of years. It’s inescapable with associating wisdom with joy, play, and love, of conflating the good, the beautiful, and the true. Something that makes C. S. Lewis’ writing tick for me more than before, makes Tolkien seem more Christian. Proverbs invites me to delight in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard and Kafka instead of slogging through another cheap book on why if your hermeneutics isn’t just exactly the same as the author’s, you fail to submit to God or the text.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point well enough.
Citizens & Sons 