On Edwin Kaiser and Related Topics

[Scott Kaiser]

There are three books in the Bible, and they're called what's become of the wisdom literature. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. And all these books are addressing the same questions. What kind of world are we living in, what does it look like to live well in this world, and how to live a good life. So each of these books tackles these questions from the unique perspective, and it's important to understand all of them to get a full biblical perspective on a good life. As a thought experiment, you could imagine each of these books as a person.


So Proverbs would be like this brilliant young teacher and Ecclesiastes, a sharp middle-age critic, and Job would be this weathered old man who's seen a lot in his day. We're going to start by meeting the book Proverbs, the brilliant teacher, and she's not just smart, she smart about everything. Work, relationships, sex, spirituality, she has incredible insights into things you would not see on your own. She would be the perfect friend to have around when you need someone to talk to when you really need specific advice.


So what makes her so smart? Proverbs can see things most, she believes there is an invisible creative force in the universe that could guide people how they should live. You can't see it like you can't see gravity, but it affects everything we do. So what's this force? In Hebrew it's called hocma, and it usually gets translated into English as wisdom, it's an attribute of God, that God uses to create the world. Hocma has been woven into the fabric of things, and how they become so, wherever people are making good, wise, just decisions they're tapping into hocma, and whenever someone is making a bad decision they're working against hocma. As it says in Proverbs chapter 1 the wayward of fools will destroy them, but the one who listens to wisdom lives in security. So it's more like amoral law of the verse, it's a cause effect pattern no one can escape.


Proverbs personifies all this as a woman. As if she is roaming around the earth calling herself out to anyone who's willing to listen, which leads to the second thing Proverbs believes, that anyone can interact with wisdom. You can use it to make a beautiful life for yourself or for others. Hocma is something you develop as a skill to make a good life. So let's go find some wisdom, but before we do, Proverbs has one more thing to consider, hocma isn't some personal force, it's an attribute of God himself. Your journey doesn't start off with wisdom. Wisdom is inherited by fearing the Lord. It's this healthy respect of God's definition between good and evil, and true wisdom is learning those boundary lines and not crossing them.


The second part of Proverbs is a collection of hundreds and hundreds of Proverbs about any and all aspects of life, and hocma gets applied to them resulting in this wise guidance in helping you to select this path in life no matter what you do, if I design my life with these sayings, life is going to be good. Health, prosperity, and a rich life which is a really big claim.


You can see how it's often the case, wise people, they tend to do better, life usually works out well for them, and so that is the promise and wisdom in the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is really beautiful, but if we take a step back, some people would argue that it's too simplistic because some horrible things happen to some really wise people, and sometimes foolish people get rewarded, it doesn't always work the way we think it should work, or the way we would want it to which is why we would need to go to our next wise friend Ecclesiastes.