Proverbs 1 to 3

2855 words long.

Published on 2024-06-26

This article was originally published as the introductory section of "Appendix E: The Plan of Proverbs", in Peace, Like Solomon Never Knew. It covers the first three chapters of Proverbs. Unlike subsequent chapters of Proverbs, the prophecies in these chapters that fit into the prophetic clock based on Solomon's Growth Pattern are not forward looking prophecies. Since these chapters were the ones most likely to have been written by Solomon (and certainly no one who lived earlier than Solomon), any historical events to which they allude happened before the lifetime of the writer. Only the analysis of the later chapters discloses and elaborates upon forward looking prophecies.

That does not mean that Proverbs 1-3 is devoid of forward looking prophecies, just that I haven't found them. If they exist, they belong to a different prophetic structure. In Ecclesiastes, I found the same twenty-eight period pattern applied to multiple time frames: Creation to Christ's return, Solomon's Temple Dedication to Christ's Return, and Rebirth of Israel to Christ's Return. It would not surprise me if Proverbs includes echoes of the basic pattern as well.

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The Plan of Proverbs

I tried to write a book about Ecclesiastes that said almost nothing about ut it would not let me be. Proverbs was a collaborative effort. Regardless of what you think about various documentary hypotheses that scholars have advanced to describe how the Bible came to be, Proverbs was unquestionably edited centuries after Solomon died. We know this because the Bible says so (in Proverbs 25:1). Scholars working for Hezekiah gathered material from Solomon and some other kings and arranged it into the form we have today.

It reads like it was designed by committee. A few beautiful poems at the beginning and end sandwich an omnium gatherum of pithy sayings. Most chapters have a few couplets on related topics floating in a sea of miscellany. A typical devotional posture is to view the thirty-one chapters as the right size to read in a month, one per day. If the chapter count matched the length of a sidereal month, like the twenty-eight times in Ecclesiastes, it would encourage one to seek a correspondence to Proverbs.

If anyone but Hezekiah were involved, I would not have tried. Recall from “Appendix D: To Number our Psalms” that Hezekiah wrote Psalm 102 and it was structured according to Solomon’s twenty-eight times. With Hezekiah and team editing Proverbs, if what was handed to him followed a clever structure, he was wise enough to recognize and preserve it. And if the proverbs handed to him did not follow a careful plan, he was wise enough (or infused enough with the Holy Spirit) to reshape the sayings to tell a larger story.

This is that story.

As with other prophetic clocks covered so far, the book is broken into before and after. The first three chapters correspond to the three millennia that preceded Solomon. They are backward looking. The remaining twenty-eight chapters mirror Ecclesiastes. They begin with the temple dedication in 960 BC. Then each chapter covers 120 years of history.

Those initial three chapters each have three correspondences: to a millennium, to a season, and to a member of the Trinity:

• Chapter 1 (4020–3020 BC), Autumn, The Son
• Chapter 2 (3020–2020 BC), Winter, The Holy Spirit
• Chapter 3 (2020–1020 BC), Spring, The Father
• Chapters 4–31 (1020 BC–?), Summer to Autumn

The story is one of a failed harvest (in Eden) followed by a year in which God has been busy. Summer is almost over. The final harvest will soon come in.

The deliberate matching of each member of the Trinity to one of the introductory chapters says that at some level, the sevenfold harvest pattern is operating. In the analysis that follows, verses demonstrating connections to history, the season of the year, and the member of the Trinity will be shown for the first three chapters. Then for the remaining twenty-eight chapters, the following will be given:

• Chapter number
• “Time” from Ecclesiastes 3
• Historical year range (spanning 120 years)
• Verses related to the “time”
• Prophecies of events falling in the year range

All quotes in this appendix will be from the ESV, unless otherwise noted. Most chapters have verses related to the time. Most include a prophecy. All have at least one of the two. Many of the proverbs are riddles. If a chapter does not seem to have any prophecies, it is because:

I am weary, O God;

I am weary, O God, and worn out.

Surely I am too stupid to be a man.

I have not the understanding of a man.

I have not learned wisdom,

nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.

- Proverbs 30:1b-3

I trust that the missing prophecies are there, but I lack the knowledge to solve those riddles. Here then are the ones I was able to unravel…

Proverbs 1 (4020–3020 BC), Autumn, The Son

Person. Proverbs is framed as a father’s exhortation to his son to fear God and pursue wisdom. King Solomon refers to himself as the Son of David in verse 1, a title that equally applies to Jesus. Verses 1, 8, 10 and 15 all address the king’s son. Thus the person of the Trinity most in view in this chapter is God the Son.

Events. As Genesis 1 describes the beginning of the physical world, Proverbs 1 describes the beginning of wisdom, saying, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” - Proverbs 1:7

Verse 8 invokes the wise and loving counsel of both father and mother, even Adam and Eve. The first parental warning ties us to a dark tale from Genesis, suggesting the time when Cain slew his brother Abel:

My son, if sinners entice you,

do not consent.

If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;

let us ambush the innocent without reason; (1:10-11)

Verse 21 says that Wisdom cries out “at the entrance of the city gates”. Genesis 4:17 tells us that Cain built the first city. Though Wisdom visited his gates, sadly he didn’t listen.

Season. The first day of history would not end before Adam and Eve met their end, with verse 12 introducing Sheol, the pit of death. Though they began life in Eden, a place of perpetual Autumn harvest, the harvest of their era would be barren. The key reference to a harvest comes near the end of the chapter: “therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.” - Proverbs 1:31b

Prophecy. The prophecy is a warning to all generations backed by events in the first two millennia.

I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when terror strikes you,

when terror strikes you like a storm

and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,

when distress and anguish come upon you.

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;

they will seek me diligently but will not find me.

- Proverbs 1:26-28

Genesis records for us when people first began to call upon the name of the Lord:

To Seth also a son was born,

and he called his name Enosh.

At that time people began to

call upon the name of the Lord.

- Genesis 4:26

However, when did God refuse to answer? When did he strike the world with a terrible storm? That came in the second millennia. Why then is the warning here? Some scholars believe that Methuselah’s name means “When he dies, it will come”. The year Methuselah died was the year of the flood. Thus that man’s name was a prophecy of the coming of God’s wrath. Methuselah may have died in the second millennium, but he was born in the first, a warning of what was to come.

When did calamity come like a whirlwind, the second warning? During the third millennia, Job’s family was killed by a whirlwind and Pharaoh’s armies were first kept at bay by cloud and fire, then destroyed when the wind that parted the Red Sea stopped blowing and the waves swallowed them.

When shall distress come upon the nations? This will happen when the Lord returns:

“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars,

and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity

because of the roaring of the sea and the waves…”

- Luke 21:25

Adam & Eve, the evil fruit, Cain & Abel, a warning of the coming flood… The metaphors invoking these events are all dark, except one. Eve is told in Genesis 3:15 that her seed – her son (many times removed) – would crush the serpent. So remember:

Proverbs 2 (3020–2020 BC), Winter, The Holy Spirit

Person. The Holy Spirit is concerned with the heart, with emotion, passion, and desire. Chapter 2 of Proverbs is about fashioning a strong desire for wisdom. It uses phrases like treasure up, making your ear attentive, inclining your heart, calling out, raising your voice, seeking, and searching to hammer the point home. Then in verse 10, the end goal is that “wisdom will come into your heart”.

Season. Unlike chapters one and three, which have clear associations with autumn and spring, this chapter has no obvious association with winter. The activity it describes – searching for silver and hidden treasure (2:4) – is what people of that day would engage in during the dry season, not during planting or harvest time.

Events. The tie-in to events of the second millennium is clear. One of the provocations cited by God as a reason for sending the flood was sexual immorality with a hint of adulterous seduction, described in Genesis as “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.” (Genesis 6:2, ESV) This matches the warning against following the adulteress in Proverbs 2:16-19. The flood itself is suggested by the words “but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.” (Proverbs 2:22)

A second event from that millennium also factors in. Verses 2,5,6,9, and 11 have the words understand or understanding, which we are to pursue. Verse 12 says that getting that understanding is good for “delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech”. Mankind ignored this when it built the Tower of Babel. God’s answer was to rob people of understanding by robbing them of comprehensible speech:

Come, let us go down and there confuse their language,

so that they may not understand one another's speech.”

- Genesis 11:7

Those people literally became “men of perverted speech”!

Mixed in with all the bad news is a connection easily overlooked. Part of the charge against the adulterous woman is that she is one “who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God…" (2:17) The first uses of the word covenant in the Bible are found in Genesis 6 and 9 when God establishes his covenant with Noah. By mixing the idea of marriage (even one that was defiled by adultery) in with the word covenant, Solomon is making a profound connection. Our covenant with God should be as intimate as marriage. This concept recurs throughout Proverbs and is fully developed in the final chapter.

Proverbs 3 (2020–1020 BC), Spring, The Father

Chapter 3 begins in verse 2 by summarizing the desirable consequences of pursuing wisdom: “for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you”. By making two references to time (days and years) and focusing on peace, this is a clear connection to the twenty-eight times in Ecclesiastes 3, which end with a time for peace. This is reiterated in verse 17, among my favorites in the whole book, which says, *“Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” * Surely Proverbs illuminates every step along that path, adding to what Ecclesiastes began.

Person. The key verses that identifies this chapter as relating to the Father are these:

My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline

or be weary of his reproof,

for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,

as a father the son in whom he delights.

- Proverbs 3:11-12, ESV

Events. The references to the creation in verses 19 & 20 also bring the role of the Father to mind, but challenge the assignment of this chapter to the third millennium. The resolution to this conundrum is that this chapter is a parable for the creation of the people of Israel, which did occur in this period. A more direct analogy is found in verse 3, which says, *“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” * Except for one reference in Habakkuk and an analogy in one of Paul’s letters, the word tablets always refers to the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God. What Paul said in that letter is very much like what Solomon said here:

And you show that you are a letter from Christ

delivered by us, written not with ink but with

the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone

but on tablets of human hearts.

- 2 Corinthians 3:3

Another event alluded to here is the rescue from Egypt, for verse 33 says, “The Lord's curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous.” This recalls the curse on the firstborn, which passed over the dwellings of the Jews but struck the houses of the Egyptians.

Season. Of the first three chapters, the identification with a particular season is strongest here:

Honor the Lord with your wealth

and with the firstfruits of all your produce;

then your barns will be filled with plenty,

and your vats will be bursting with wine. (3:9-10)

The feast of firstfruits occurs in the spring and it was established by Moses during this millennium.

Prophecy. Like Solomon’s Son-dial, there are key phrases in Proverbs that mark special times in history. This chapter introduces one with the words, “She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.” (3:18) In this chapter, Israel is that tree of life. David’s father, Jesse, would be likened by Isaiah to a stump out of which would grow a new king, the messiah.

The phrase “tree of life” appears three more times in Proverbs, in 11:30, 13:12 and 15:4. According to Solomon’s clock, these are the events marked by that phrase.

• 11:30 falls in the era 120 BC–1 AD. It marks the birth of Christ. “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise.” Surely none but Christ could capture souls once enslaved by sin and set them free!
• 13:12 falls in the era 120–240 AD. This was a time of great persecution. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” Christians hoped for the time when Christ would return and set up his kingdom, but it did not come during their days. In Revelation 2, Jesus promised the church of Ephesus that they would eat from the Tree of Life (a promise made ca 95 AD), but to the persecuted church of Smyrna he promised the crown of life.
• 15:4 falls in the era 360–480 AD, when Rome became a Christian empire; the deferred hope for the crown of life had come. “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit… In the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.” (15:4,6) Jesus said that you have to bind the strong man before you can carry off his treasure, those souls that Christ set out to win. Now the Church had the treasure of the Roman Empire at its disposal.

The three latter references to the tree of life correspond to the members of the Trinity, given in the same order as the first three chapters of Proverbs. The first is the Son who wins souls. The second is the Spirit that gives hope to the persecuted. The third is the Father, who miraculously alters society and reshapes empires in a visible way.

There you have it. The first three chapters of Proverbs introduce the path to peace, comment on events that went before, give proper respect to each member of the Trinity for the role he plays, and wrap it in a pattern of the seasons of the year, proceeding towards a harvest. Now it is time to walk through the remaining twenty-eight chapters to see what each says about its era of history and corresponding time from Solomon’s list.

Since Hezekiah and his men arranged the proverbs during the third time, a time to plant, any correspondence between verses in chapters 4–6 is likely backwards looking commentary, not forward looking prophecy.

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Continue reading with Proverbs 4 to 19.