Lately I've been reading the book of Proverbs, which, if I understand things right, is supposed to contain the wisdom of Solomon—or at least some of it. Not a bad recommendation for a book.
As you may be aware—or as you could guess without too much difficulty—the text of Proverbs is rather preoccupied with one thing: wisdom. It talks a lot about wisdom and understanding (often those two concepts paired, as they are in Job 28:28, which makes me wonder who paired them originally) and how good they are and how to get them and what things qualify one as a posessor of wisdom and how a posessor of wisdom behaves and so on. There are some wonderful proverbs in Proverbs: insightful observations and memorable admonitions aplenty.
The text, however, doesn't really flow. I should expect that, really. It is, after all, a collection of proverbs. Reading it should be like reading a quote book. But it's organized in chapters so somehow I expect chapters to have some logical organization and continuum. Perhaps it is there and I'm just not seeing it. But it appears to be a fairly random cobbling-together of Solomon's proverbs. Subjects are repeated in various chapters and verse often doesn't connect to verse.
Anyway, that's not a major problem, but it does make it not quite so engaging to read. You don't get a feeling of progression as you move through the book. It's just proverb after proverb after proverb, and some of the proverbs are beyond my comprehension and some of them are repetitious and the process can get a bit mind-numbing.
But there are some wonderful gems to be found. So this morning as I was going through chapter 17, I decided to start pulling out the gems. I've run across many proverbs in Proverbs that resonate with me, and I think extracting those proverbs from the text around them might be a good way for me to be more engaged in the reading of the book as well as a way to help me remember the highlights and benefit from them.
So, for what it's worth, here are my highlights from Proverbs, chapter 17. I worked backwards through chapter 14 today (pulling out my favorites), and maybe someday I'll post all of them here, but for now, here's one chapter's worth.
Chapter 17
10. a reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.
17. a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
22. a merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
27. He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit.
28. Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
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