Nathan W. Bingham (0:00)

How should we interpret wisdom literature in the Bible?

R.C. Sproul (0:03)

Look at it for what it is, practical wisdom, principles that can serve you in your everyday struggles with life. But don't confuse the Proverbs with moral absolutes. They were never intended to be read that way. They were never set forth for us as the Ten Commandments were.

Nathan W. Bingham (0:27)

The Bible contains many different forms of writing. Historical narratives, poetry, didactic teaching, just to name a few. And as we turn to a book in the Bible, it's important to know what category it falls under to understand it and apply its meaning. Today on Renewing youg Mind, RC Sproul will help us with a unique form of Hebrew literature that was common in ancient Israel. But before we hear from him, don't forget to request this 12 message series when you give a donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org as this offer ends today, here's Dr. Sproul.

R.C. Sproul (1:06)

I remember reading a chapter in a volume in theology written by my mentor, Dr. G.C. berkower, and the title of the chapter was the Biblical A Priori. Well, an a priori is a principle that is so basic and so foundational that it ought never to to be violated. And the point of Burkhar's chapter was this, that the one basic axiom of Scripture is that we ought never, never, never, never to attribute in any way possible the doing of evil to God. And that it is a principle of Christianity that God is never the author of evil, that he's utterly incapable of doing evil. If you turn in your Bible, if you have the King James version of the Bible, we turn it open to the 45th chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, to verse 7, where God is speaking. And he says, here I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. Now, in our last time together, I said we have to be very careful about achieving a harmony of balance between implications and explications, what the Bible clearly said. Now, doesn't the text right here say so clearly that one couldn't miss it? God is saying, I created evil. It's not an inference drawn from the text. He explicitly says that he creates evil. How then can we say in theology that God never, never, never creates evil when the Bible says straight out right here, I create evil? What do you do with that? Actually, to solve this problem is a simple matter if we are able to recognize the specific literary form in which that particular text comes to us. What we have here is an example of a particular kind of parallelism. Which is a form, a literary device that is very commonplace to the Hebrew and found throughout the Scriptures. But we are not accustomed to it so readily in our language as the Jew was in antiquity. And so sometimes we don't recognize it when it appears. And we stumble and get caught up and run into all kinds of bear traps because of our inability to recognize a parallelism. So what I want to do here, before I resolve this problem of creating evil, is to take some time to define this literary form of parallelism. So we'll be able to recognize it when it comes in view. And parallelism simply is what it suggests where you have verses or stanzas of Scripture that are set in close proximity to each other in some form of parallel fashion. The trick, however, is that there are different kinds and different types of parallelisms. There are what we call synthetic parallelisms, synonymous parallelisms, antithetical parallelisms, and other types. And each one has its own rules for interpretation. Let's begin with the easiest, what we call synonymous parallelism. A synonymous parallelism is a case in the text where your two lines or your two verses or your two stances say the same idea, but in slightly different ways or slightly different forms of speech. Let's turn to the Book of Proverbs, if we may, and let's go to Proverbs, chapter 19, where we can find an example of synonymous parallelism. In verse 5 of Proverbs 19, we read as A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape. And you see that there are two parts to each line. In the first line we read, a false witness shall not be unpunished. The false witness is the one who. Who will not be unpunished. In the second part we read, and he that tells lies. Well, who is he that tells lies? He who tells lies is a false witness, and he shall not escape. The same thought exactly is expressed in both verses. He who is unjust shall not go unpunished. He who tells lies shall not escape, and so on. So synonymous parallelism says exactly the same thing with the slight alteration of language. I may have mentioned this already that many have tripped over the statement in the Lord's Prayer, where, when we pray in the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Here we have another case of synonymous parallelism, where both stanzas are saying substantially the same thing. And if we understand that, we won't get caught up in all of the problems that have developed from misunderstandings of the Lord's Prayer at that Point. Well, let's look at a different kind of parallelism for a second, what we call antithetic or contrasting types of parallelism, where the two lines contrast one idea with another. Let's look at Proverbs Now, Proverbs 13:10. Only by pride comes contention. But with the well advised is wisdom. That is pride brings trouble. The well advised, or the humble brings well being. So that you have the contrast between good and evil set in parallel forms, in a balanced form. And that is found repeatedly in particularly the poetic literature of the Old Testament, what we call the wisdom literature, the Proverbs, the Psalms, book of Job, and so on, but certainly not exclusively in the wisdom books. We find it also particularly in the prophets. Another form of parallelism is what we call synthetic parallelism, where there is kind of a rising crescendo, where statements build upon one another. And we'll look at that in Psalm 92. 9. For lo thine enemies, O Lord. For lo thine enemies shall perish. All the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn, and I shall be anointed with fresh oil. You see the building crescendo of the punishment that is given to the wicked, that then leads to the opposite conclusion for the righteous. And you have two or three verses that build another. Let me give you another one. Matthew 7, verse 7. This is a very famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount that I think you'll all recognize. Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be open unto you. Do you see that you really have three ideas? Ask, seek, knock. It's sort of a synthesis of different ideas, but they're really in step up fashion really saying the same thing. Really, it's almost a kind of synonymous parallelism. But it's that recognition that when we see parallelism, we know we're dealing with poetry and a flag should go up on our head. That is a poetic structure that we need to be careful that we don't misinterpret it. And not only that, particularly if we recognize parallelism and we don't know what a passage means. If we have two lines, for example, that are saying substantially the same thing, we're not clear what it says in the second part. If the first part is clear, the second part is clarified by the first part. Now let's take an example. Let's go back to the problem I started with in Isaiah chapter 45, where God says, I, the Lord do all these things. He says, I form the light and I create the darkness. What is that? I form the light and I create the darkness. The two elements within the first verse are in contrast to each other. I form light. I bring the darkness. Light and darkness are set in contrast. And then the next part of the verse we read, I make peace and I create evil. Now, what we have here is a type of antithesis, a form of contrast between light and darkness, and now peace and evil. But if I were to ask you to take out a piece of paper and I say, okay, what is the opposite of light? What would you say? You'd say, darkness. What's the opposite of cold? You'd say, hot. I'd say, what's the opposite of peace? You'd say, war. I'd say, what's the opposite of evil? You'd say goodness or righteousness. But here it says, I make peace and I create evil. Doesn't balance, does it? Because though the first part of the sentence, light and darkness are clearly opposites, the next part of the parallelism, I make peace and I create evil, don't jive in the same way of antithesis as we would expect. The reason for that is just simply here we have an awkward translation of the Hebrew text. In the Old Testament, there were many, many different words for evil. And for that, because the Jew understood evil in lots of different ways. A calamity that befalls a nation, an earthquake, a hurricane, a defeat in war, that was bad. You come and you say, I have for you today bad news. Having a terrible storm. A hurricane's coming. It's going to wipe out the city. That's bad news. But that is not the same thing as talking about moral evil or what we call sin. We don't attribute sin to hurricanes. We don't attribute sin to tornadoes or to floods, do we? But the Jew said, they're all different ways in which man suffers, and all of them are bad in a certain sense, in a physical sense, or in a sense of prosperity. More modern translations render this verse, I am the Lord, I form the light, I create darkness. I bring weal, I bring woe, or I bring prosperity and I bring calamity. But when it says in the old King James, I create evil, it makes it sound that at the very beginning of the creation, God comes down and implants a wicked desire of moral corruption in the heart of men, which the rest of the Bible completely repudiates any idea of. But, you see, once we recognize this as the parallelism, even if we don't know a word in Hebrew. We can see that there's something wrong here in our understanding that the contrast doesn't come across as it obviously should. What God is saying here is, look, I am God and I bring blessing, I bring curse, I lift up nations, I bring down nations, I grant prosperity, and if you're wicked, I bring calamity. I do all of these things. That does not. I mean, God does visit us with bad things as a judgment. That is not the same thing as saying that God creates evil in an ultimate sense. Okay, so I hope you'll be able to recognize parallelism when you see it. I think just even this quick overview of them will be all that you need, because you're going to begin to see them in almost every page of the Bible. They're so frequently found in Scriptures, and sometimes they really help us understand what the Bible is teaching once we recognize them. Because what is obscure in one part of the verse is made clear by the other part of the verse, and a host of sticky problems can be unraveled that way. Now that we've used, however, some of the poetic literature, some of the wisdom literature, some examples from proverbs of biblical style, I need to say another word about how to interpret the proverbs and put it in a broader context of how we interpret Biblical laws and principles and precepts. And the first rule, of course, is to be able to distinguish between different kinds of laws that we find in the Bible. There are several, but I'm just going to focus attention on three types of precept or principles that the Bible teaches us as according to the style or the form in which they come. These three are casuistic law, apodictic law, and proverb. Okay, casuistic law, C A, S U, I S, T, I C. Put it on the character generator for you. Casuistic law is just a fancy word for case law, and the normal form in which it's found is the form of an example or an illustration, usually with the words if. Then if you go back in the Old Testament, you read the line, it says, if your ox tramples down your neighbor's roses, then you must pay such and such indemnity towards your neighbors. Now, the point of case law is to give you a model, a guideline for practical judgments in the law court. If the Bible sat down principles and rules to govern every conceivable human situation, the book would be fatter than all of our law books put together. And you know how many law books there are in the Land today, it's such a wealth of information, you can hardly find press. And so what the Bible does is give general guidelines, general principle. In other words, if it's not my ox that tramples down your rose bushes, but it's my donkey that tramples down your chrysanthemums, I'm not going to find a specific legal guide or principle in the Bible about it. But I get the general idea of what should be done because I see that model or that illustration, that case or for instance, discovered in the case law structures. If A happens, then B should follow. Now, that's case law. That's what we would call sort of precedent law. There's another form of law where we are now talking about moral absolutes. That is called apodictic law. A, P O D I C, T I C. And the usual formula for that is in the direct form of address of you shall or you shall not. Now, where do we find these maxims set down for us? They're not just individual cases, but they become the universal principles, the foundational principles upon which the case law is established, just as our Constitution would give us. The foundational laws upon which the particular bits of legislation we pass in the State House are to be measured here. Of course, in the Old Testament, we find that most clearly in the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet, and so on the form of that, thou shalt not. Or thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart and all of thy soul, and so on. That is in the form of what is called apodictic law. It's easy enough to distinguish between apodictic law and case law just by the very way in which it is spoken. But there's another principle that comes in here that is often confusing, and that's the proverb. What do we do with the proverb? How do you interpret a proverb? How do you apply a proverb as a moral principle to your life? There can be real problems here. Let's look again at Proverbs. Chapter 26, chapter 26, verse 4. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him. So what's the precept here of wisdom that we are given? Don't answer a fool according to his folly, because you're going to be just like him if you do. All right, we learned that. And they said, hey, that makes sense. Now we go to verse 5. Answer a fool according to his Folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. Now here you have two verses of Scripture, back to back in consecutive standing that clearly contradict each other. The first one says, don't answer a fool according to his folly. The very next verse says, answer a fool according to his folly. Now how in the world do you reconcile that? Well, if these two passages were coming to us as moral absolutes, we would have a hopeless contradiction. But they're not coming to us as apodictic law. They're coming to us as proverbs, as little gems, little insights, little vignettes of practical wisdom. And you can find many such vignettes of wisdom in the Old Testament that seem on the surface to conflict one with another. And that shouldn't surprise us because we find the same thing in English speaking countries with our own proverbial wisdom. I'm thinking, for example of two proverbs that are commonplace to our own culture. Think of this one, look before you leap. That's proverb number one. Proverb number two is he who hesitates is lost. I can see that there are times in history perhaps where actually you can get into a human situation where those two acts of proverbial wisdom may come into direct conflict. I got to remember an illustration in my own life that's not what I'm proud of. I was in high school and I was out cruising the streets in my hometown about 3 o'clock in the morning and there was a, you know, you were not supposed to be walking around the streets of town at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was a suburban community and I had been in an all night restaurant and I was just kind of strolling around in town and I certainly didn't want the police to know I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't robbing anybody, I wasn't into any trouble. But I was where I was not supposed to be at 3 o'clock in the morning. And all of a sudden as I was walking up the street, I looked back and I headlights of a car coming up and I thought, oh, what if that's the police? Because I know if it's the police, they catch me walking the streets at 3 o'clock, they're going to put me in the car, they're going to take me home and my parents are going to say what in the world are you doing out at 3 o'clock in the morning? So I'm trying to avoid that kind of trouble. Police car drives up the street and as soon as I see the lights Coming. I duck back into the bushes in somebody's front yard hoping that I would be able to hide and they wouldn't see me. But suddenly they had picked up my figure shadow moving into the bushes in their headlights. Suddenly their floodlight comes on right into the bushes. They hurry up up the street and throw the car into a halt. And they open the doors and they start running across the yard. And I take off because now they're mad. I don't want to get caught. And so I elect to run from the police. And this is 3:00 in the morning. It's pitch dark out at night. I am running through people's yards in a suburban community. I am knocking over garbage cans. Two policemen are running worth behind me, closing the gap. And as I'm running through this neighborhood, I suddenly I come to this big row of hedges. And I have no idea what's on the other side of those hedges, but I know what's behind me. It's a policeman breathing down my neck. I'm wearing glasses and everything. And I just take a chance. I didn't have time. I could not hesitate. Because if I hesitated, I'm lost. I'm lost to the police. They're going to get me, right? But I can't look before I leap. And I leapt right through the hedges and landed on my face in some little child's sandbox, right? My glasses are all over the place. I got sand in my hair, sand in my clothes, sand all over me. But fortunately the sandbox saved me from even rockier landing. I brushed myself off, got up and ran. People's lights were coming on, blinds were coming, windows were opening. I'm making all kind of racket. But I escaped. Police didn't catch me. Maybe they'll still have an APB out on me from that years ago. But the point is, in that life situation I had to choose between looking before I leave or hesitating and being lost. So I just want to be careful here that as you read the Proverbs, as you read the risen literature, look at it for what it is. Practical wisdom, principles that can serve you in your everyday struggles with life. Transcendent wisdom. Wisdom that comes from the mind of God. But don't confuse the Proverbs with moral absolutes. They were never intended to be read that way. They were never set forth for us as the Ten Commandments were. There is a difference in how we interpret those laws. And we need to recognize.