Wisdom Writing in the Old Testament

Personal notes taken from The History and Religion of Israel: The New Clarendon Bible, Text of The Revised Standard Version, by G. W. Anderson, c. 1966, Oxford University Press.

There are certain books in the Old Testament which have a particular international character, and which present man as man, in his varied relationships as a creature of God. They are, for the most part, curiously silent about the might deeds of God in Israel's history, and relate their instruction to His work as Creator and His providential ordering of the world. These are the Wisdom books: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, and, in the Apocrypha, the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. A number of Psalms (e.g., 1, 37, 49, 73) also belong to the Wisdom literature; and both Joseph and Daniel reflect the Wisdome ideal.

Wisdom writings: generally associated with post-Exilic period, but Wisdom writing can be traced back to time of the monarchy. It was the age of Solomon where we see emergency of Wisdom literature as we define it today.

The Wisdom writings have been called "the documents of Hebrew humanism." They delineate the religious and moral responsibility of man as man; and, for the most part, the ideal of character and conduct which they represent is that of the wise man, without overt reference to the specificaly Israelite tradition.

Wisdom was not merely intellectual, but practical and moral. Fundamentally it was religious. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It is the religious element that unifies the whole range of Wisdom teaching: natural lore, rules of conduct, the working of providence, reward and punishment, the ultimate meaning of life.