Proverbs E-Book

Brian Simmons

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: The Passion Translation
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 178

Beschreibung

Proverbs 1 and 2: ¹Here are kingdom revelations, words to live by, And words of wisdom given To empower you to reign in life, written as proverbs by Israel s King Solomon, David s son. ²Within these sayings will be found The revelation of wisdom and the impartation of spiritual understanding. Use them as keys to unlock the treasures of true knowledge. The book of Proverbs is packed with incredible secrets of wisdom that awaken our hearts! We can expect a download of heavenly insights into our destinies, relationships, careers, finances, and every other aspect of our lives. Loaded with footnotes that clarify the sacred text, this translation will unfold the meaning of the proverbs written by King Solomon. The gift of wisdom from above is given by a generous Father who is ready to fill our hearts with all that we need to succeed in life and reign in Christ. Solomon was supernaturally infused with God s wisdom, and when God writes a book, it is more than meets the eye! A greater understanding awaits us as we read Proverbs: Wisdom from Above.

Leseprobe

Proverbs: Wisdom from Above, The Passion Translation®

Translated from the original Hebrew text by Dr. Brian Simmons

Published by BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC

Racine, Wisconsin, USA

www.broadstreetpublishing.com

© 2014 The Passion Translation®

ISBN-13: 9781424549429 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 9781424549733 (e-book)

The text of Proverbs: Wisdom from Above, The Passion Translation®, may be quoted up to and including thirty (30) verses without written permission from the publisher. When Proverbs: Wisdom from Above, The Passion Translation®, is quoted, one of the following credit lines must appear on the copyright page of the work:

Scripture quotations marked TPT are taken from Proverbs: Wisdom from Above, The Passion Translation®, copyright © 2014. Used by permission of BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC, Racine, Wisconsin, USA. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from Proverbs: Wisdom from Above, The Passion Translation®, copyright © 2014. Used by permission of BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC, Racine, Wisconsin, USA. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Translator’s Introduction

Proverbs 1

Proverbs 2

Proverbs 3

Proverbs 4

Proverbs 5

Proverbs 6

Proverbs 7

Proverbs 8

Proverbs 9

Proverbs 10

Proverbs 11

Proverbs 12

Proverbs 13

Proverbs 14

Proverbs 15

Proverbs 16

Proverbs 17

Proverbs 18

Proverbs 19

Proverbs 20

Proverbs 21

Proverbs 22

Proverbs 23

Proverbs 24

Proverbs 25

Proverbs 26

Proverbs 27

Proverbs 28

Proverbs 29

Proverbs 30

Proverbs 31

About the Translator

Translator’s Introduction

AT A GLANCE

Author: Mostly Solomon, King of Israel, but other various contributors, too.

Audience: Originally Israel, but these words of wisdom are for everyone—they are written to you.

Date: Preexile (Chapters 10–29) and Postexile (Chapters 1–9, 30–31), the tenth to fifth centuries BC.

Type of Literature: Poetry and wisdom literature.

Major Themes: the fear of the Lord; God’s transcendence and immanence; Godly wisdom and human foolishness; the righteous and wicked wealth and poverty; men and women; husbands and wives; Jesus and wisdom.

Outline:

Collection I: 1:1-9:18 — Introduction to Wisdom

Collection II: 10:1-22:16 — Sayings of Solomon, Part 1

Collection III: 22:17-24:22 — Sayings of the Wise

Collection IV: 24:23-34 — More Sayings of the Wise

Collection V: 25:1 -29:27 — Sayings of Solomon, Part 2

Collection VI: 30:1 -31:31 — Sayings of Agur and Lemuel

ABOUT PROVERBS

The Bible is a book of poetry, not simply starched, stiff doctrines, devoid of passion. The Bible, including Proverbs, is full of poetic beauty and subtle nuances ripe with meaning. The ancient wisdom of God fills its pages!

Proverbs is a book of wisdom from above tucked inside of metaphors, symbols, and poetic imagery. God could properly be described as the divine Poet and master Artisan who crafted the cosmos to portray his glory and has given us his written Word to reveal his wisdom. Inspired from eternity, the sixty-six books of our Bible convey the full counsel and wisdom of God. Do you need wisdom? God has a verse for that!

Five books of divine poetry show us the reality of knowing God through experience, not just through history or doctrines. Job points us to the end of our self-life to discover the greatest revelation of the Lord, which is his tender love and wisdom. Psalms reveals the new life we enter into with God, expressed through praise and prayer. Next is Proverbs, where we enroll in the divine seminary of wisdom and revelation to learn the ways of God. Ecclesiastes teaches us to set our hearts not on the things of this life but on those values that endure eternally. And finally in Song of Songs, the sweetest lyrics ever composed lead us into divine romance where we are immersed in Jesus’ love for his bride.

The nature of Hebrew poetry is quite different from that of English poetry. There is a pleasure found in Hebrew poetry that transcends rhyme and meter. The Hebrew verses come in a poetic package, a form of meaning that imparts an understanding that is deeper than mere logic. True revelation unfolds an encounter—an experience of knowing God as he is revealed through the mysterious vocabulary of riddle, proverb, and parable.

For example, the Hebrew word for proverb, mashal, has two meanings. The first is “parable, byword, metaphor, a pithy saying that expresses wisdom.” But the second meaning is overlooked by many. The homonym mashal can also mean “to rule, to take dominion,” or “to reign with power.”

What you have before you now is a dynamic translation of the ancient book of Proverbs. These powerful words will bring you revelation from the throne room—the wisdom you need to guide your steps and direct your life. What you learn from these verses will change your life and launch you into your destiny.

BOOK PROFILE

Purpose

Within this divinely anointed compilation of Proverbs, there is a deep well of wisdom to reign in life and to succeed in our destiny. The wisdom that God has designed for us to receive will cause us to excel—to rise up as rulers-to-be on earth for his glory. The kingdom of God is brought into the earth as we implement the godly wisdom of Proverbs.

Although the Proverbs can be interpreted in their most literal and practical sense, the wisdom contained herein is not unlocked by a casual surface reading. The Spirit of revelation has breathed upon every verse to embed a deeper meaning of practical insight to guide our steps into the life God meant for us to live.

Author & Audience

You’re about to read the greatest book of wisdom ever written, mostly penned by the wisest man to ever live. God gave his servant Solomon this wisdom to pass along to us, his servants, who continue the ministry of Jesus, the embodiment of wisdom, until he returns in full glory. While it is believed Solomon penned most of these words of wisdom, it is believed others had a hand, too, including advisers to King Hezekiah and the unknown men Agur and Lemuel—who could be pseudonyms for Solomon himself. Regardless, the one who edited the final version of Proverbs brought together the wisest teachings from the the wisest person to ever live to write a book containing some of the deepest revelation in the Bible. When Solomon pens a proverb, there is more than meets the eye!

Who are these proverbs written to? This compilation of wisdom’s words is written to you! Throughout the book we find words like “Listen, my sons. Listen, my daughters.” The book of Proverbs is written to us as sons and daughters of the living God. The teaching we receive is not from a distant god who tells us we’d better live right or else. These are personal words of love and tenderness from our wise Father, the Father of eternity, who speaks right into our hearts with healing, radiant words. Receive deeply the words of the kind Father of heaven as though he were speaking directly to you.

Major Themes

The kind of Hebrew wisdom found in the Proverbs is about the art of successful living. The universal appeal of these wise insights is that they touch on universal problems and issues that affect human behavior in us all. Several major themes are present in these godly wisdom sayings of God’s servant Solomon:

Lady Wisdom, Revelation-Knowledge, Living-Understanding. Throughout Proverbs wisdom is personified with the metaphor of Lady Wisdom, who dispenses revelation-knowledge and living-understanding. Lady Wisdom is a figure of speech for God and His divine wisdom, who invites us to receive the best way to live, the excellent and noble way of life found. She is personified as a guide (6:22), a beloved sister or bride (7:4), and a hostess (9:1-6) who generously invites people to “come and dine at my table and drink of my wine.”

In Proverbs, wisdom is inseparable from knowledge and understanding, which is not received independent of God’s revelation. We are invited to “come to the one Who has living-understanding” (9:10) in order to receive what Lady Wisdom has to offer. For God promises that revelation-knowledge will flow to the one who hungers her gift of understanding (14:6).

The Fear of the Lord. From the beginning in 1:7, Proverbs makes it clear that a person gains “the essence of wisdom” and crosses “the threshold of true knowledge” only when we fear the Lord—or, as The Passion Translation translates it, we live “in complete awe and adoration of God.” This theme of living in a way that our entire being worships and adores God is a constant theme throughout Proverbs.

God’s Transcendence and Immanence. Proverbs teaches that God is both the Author of (transcendent) and Actor within (immanent) our human story. First, God is above and outside the world: As Creator “He broke open the hidden fountains of the deep, bringing secret springs to the surface” (3:20); “God sees everything you do and his eyes are wide open as he observes every single habit you have” (5:21); He is sovereign and steers “a king’s heart for his purposes as it is for him to direct the course of a stream” (21:1).

Second, God is also apart of and involved with the world: “The rich and the poor have one thing in common: The Lord God created each one” (22:2); “The Lord champions the widow’s cause” (15:25) and He “will rise to plead [the poor’s] case” (22:23).

So Proverbs teaches God is all-powerful and transcendent, while also taking part in our human story as our defender and protector!

The Wise and Fool, Righteous and Wicked. Solomon believes there are basically two different kinds of people in the world: the wise righteous and wicked fools. The wise person possesses God’s revela-tion-knowledge and living-understanding. Therefore, he is prudent, shrewd, insightful, and does what is right because he is righteous, a God-lover. This lover of God in turn is just, peaceful, upright, blameless, good, trustworthy, and kind.

The wicked fool is a completely different person. He is greedy, violent, deceitful, cruel, and speaks perversely—it’s no wonder “The Lord detests the lifestyle of the wicked!” (15:9). As a foolish person, he is described as being gullible, an idiot, self-sufficient, a mocker, lazy, senseless, and rejects revelation-knowledge and living-understanding.

Many of Solomon’s wise sayings relate to these two different kinds of people, teaching us how to avoid being a wicked fool and instead live as God intends us to live as his wise, righteous lovers!

Wealth and Poverty. Like many of Solomon’s wise sayings, you cannot take one thought on wealth and poverty and apply it to every situation. Instead, Solomon teaches us seven major things about having wealth and being poor, and how wisdom and foolishness affect them both: the righteous are blessed with wealth by God himself; foolishness leads to poverty; fools who have wealth will soon lose it; poverty results from injustice and oppression; the wealthy are called to be generous with their wealth; gaining wisdom is far better than gaining wealth; and the value of wealth is limited.a

Jesus and the Church. As with the rest of the Old Testament, we are called to read Proverbs in light of Jesus and his ministry. Throughout the gospels Jesus associates himself with wisdom. For instance, in Matthew 11:18-19 Jesus claims his actions represent Lady Wisdom herself. Where he is identified with Lady Wisdom in the New Testament, it is a powerful way of saying that Jesus is the full, entire embodiment of Wisdom. In many ways Colossians 1:15-17 mirrors Proverbs 8. Likewise, the great preface to John’s gospel resonates with this same chapter when Jesus is associated with the Word, another personification of Wisdom.

The great reformer Martin Luther said, “The Scriptures must be understood in favor of Christ, not against him. For that reason they must either refer to him or must not be held to be true Scriptures.” Luther understood that Jesus stood at the center of Scripture; he was found throughout Scripture, not just in the New Testament. So as you read these important words of wisdom, consider how they point to the One who perfectly embodied and is our Wisdom.

A WORD ABOUT THE PASSION TRANSLATION

The message of God’s story is timeless; the Word of God doesn’t change. But the methods by which that story is communicated should be timely; the vessels that steward God’s Word can and should change.

One of those timely methods and vessels is Bible translations. Bible translations are both a gift and a problem. They give us the words God spoke through his servants, but words can become very poor containers for revelation—they leak! Over time the words change from one generation to the next. Meaning is influenced by culture, background, and a thousand other details. You can imagine how differently the Hebrew authors of the Old Testament saw the world from three thousand years ago!

There is no such thing as a truly literal translation of the Bible, for there is not an equivalent language that perfectly conveys the meaning of the biblical text except as it is understood in its original cultural and linguistic setting. Therefore, a translation can be a problem. The problem, however, is solved when we seek to transfer meaning, and not merely words, from the original text to the receptor language.

The Passion Translation is a groundbreaking attempt to reintroduce the passion and fire of the Bible to the English reader. It doesn’t merely convey the original, literal meaning of words. It expresses God’s passion for people and his world by translating the original, life-changing message of God’s Word for modern readers.

God longs to have his Word expressed in every language in a way that would unlock the passion of his heart. Our goal is to trigger inside every English speaker an overwhelming response to the truth of the Bible. This is a heart-level translation, from the passion of God’s heart to the passion of your heart.

We pray and trust this version of God’s Word will kindle in you a burning, passionate desire for him and his heart, while impacting the church for years to come!

Get ready to be filled to overflowing with the Spirit of wisdom and the revelation that God is pouring out in this hour. Proverbs is written for the sons and daughters who have been chosen to rule and reign on the earth. Hang on to every word, for all that God says will bring life to you, a life full of his wisdom from above.

You’re about to read the inspired Proverbs.

The revelation herein will make you a champion.

You will reign in victory and excel in life.

Wisdom from above will pour into your heart

Until you become an example to your generation.

Live in this book and wisdom will live in you.

a Tremper Longman III, Proverbs. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 573-574.

Proverbs 1

The Prologue

1Here are kingdom revelations, words to live by,

and words of wisdom given to empower you to reign in life,a

written as proverbs by Israel’s King Solomon,b David’s son.

2Within these sayings will be found the revelation of wisdomc

and the impartation of spiritual understanding.

Use them as keys to unlock the treasures of true knowledge.

3Those who cling to these words will receive discipline

to demonstrate wisdom in every relationship,d

and to choose what is right and just and fair.

4These proverbs will give you great skill

to teach the immature and make them wise,

to give youth the understanding of their design and destiny.

5For the wise, these proverbs will make you even wiser,

and for those with discernment,

you will be able to acquire brilliant strategies for leadership.

6These kingdom revelations will break open your understanding

to unveil the deeper meaning of parables,

poetic riddles, and epigrams,

and to unravel the words and enigmas of the wise.

7How then does a man gain the essence of wisdom?

We cross the threshold of true knowledge

when we live in complete awe and adoration of God.e

Stubborn know-it-allsf will never stop to do this,

for they scorn true wisdom and knowledge.

The Wisdom of a Father

8Pay close attention, my child, to your father’s wise words

and never forget your mother’s instructions.g

9For their insight will bring you success,

adorning you with grace-filled thoughts

and giving you reins to guide your decisions.h

10When peer pressure compels you to go with the crowd

and sinners invite you to join in,

you must simply say, “No!”

11When the gang says,

“We’re going to steal and kill and get away with it.

12We’ll take down the rich and rob them.

We’ll swallow them up alive

and take what we want from whomever we want.

13Then we’ll take their treasures and fill our homes with loot.

14So come on and join us.

Take your chance with us.

We’ll divide up all we get—

we’ll each end up with big bags of cash!”

15My son, refuse to go with them and stay far away from them.

16For crime is their way of life and bloodshed their specialty.

17To be aware of their snare is the best way of escape.

18They’ll resort to murder to steal their victim’s assets,

but eventually it will be their own lives that are ambushed.

19In their ungodly disrespect for God

they bring destruction on their own lives.

Wisdom’s Warning

20Wisdom’s praises are sung in the streets

and celebrated far and wide.

21Yet wisdom’s song is not always heard in the halls of higher learning.

But in the hustle and bustle of everyday life

its lyrics can always be heard above the din of the crowd.i

You will hear wisdom’s warning as she preaches courageously

to those who stop to listen:

22”Foolish ones, how much longer will you cling to your deception?j

How much longer will you mock wisdom,

cynical scorners who fight the facts?

23Come back to your senses and be restored to reality.

Don’t even think about refusing my rebuke!

Don’t you know that I’m ready

to pour out my spirit of wisdom upon you

and bring to you the revelation of my words

that will make your heart wise?

24I’ve called to you over

and over still you refuse to come to me.

I’ve pleaded with you again and again,

yet you’ve turned a deaf ear to my voice.

25Because you have laughed at my counsel

and have insisted on continuing in your stubbornness,

26I will laugh when your calamity comes

and will turn away from you at the time of your disaster.

Make a joke of my advice, will you?

Then I’ll make a joke out of you!

27When the storm clouds of terror gather over your head,

when dread and distress consume you

and your catastrophe comes like a hurricane,

28You will cry out to me, but I won’t answer.

Then it will be too late to expect my help.

When desperation drives you to search for me,

I will be nowhere to be found.

29Because you have turned up your nose at me

and closed your eyes to the facts

and refused to worship me in awe—k

30Because you scoffed at my wise counsel

and laughed at my correction—

31Now you will eat the bitter fruit of your own ways.

You’ve made your own bed; now lie in it!

So how do you like that?

32Like an idiot you’ve turned away from me

and chosen destruction instead.

Your self-satisfied smugnessl will kill you.

33But the one who always listens to me

will live undisturbed in a heavenly peace.

Free from fear, confident and courageous,

you will rest unafraid and sheltered from the storms of life.”

a 1:1 As stated in the introduction, the Hebrew word for “proverbs” means more than just a wise saying. It can also mean “to rule, to reign in power, to take dominion.”

b 1:1 The name Solomon means “peaceable.” There is a greater one than Solomon who gives peace to all of his followers. His name is Jesus. Solomon was the seed of David; we are the seed of Jesus Christ. Solomon had an encounter with God after asking for a discerning heart (1 Kings 3:5-14). This pleased God, so he gave Solomon wisdom, riches, and power. God is ready to impart these same things today to those who ask Him. See James 1:5-8.

c 1:2 There are six Hebrew words translated “wisdom” in the book of Proverbs. Some of them require an entire phrase in English to convey its meaning. The word used here is chokmah,