Review in: Interpretation 2011 65: 194
Review door: William P. BrownGevonden op: http://int.sagepub.com/content/65/2/194.full.pdf+html
Proverbs
10–31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
by
Michael V. FoxThe Anchor Yale Bible. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009.
752 pp. $60.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-300-14209-9.
WITH THE
PUBLICATION OF this volume, Michael Fox completes his work on the book of
Proverbs for the Anchor Yale Bible series. Like Fox’s first volume, Proverbs
1–9 (2000), this commentary exhibits erudition and precision, achieving a
fine balance between detailed textual analysis and hermeneutical substance. As
an added bonus, Fox draws extensively from medieval Hebrew commentaries in his
explication of the biblical text. Together, these two volumes offer an
insightfully rich treatment of Proverbs.
This second
volume dives into the multitude of terse proverbs that constitute Prov 10‑29. Throughout,
Fox effectively works at undermining the dictum of the great paremiologist
Wolfgang Mieder: a proverb set in a collection is dead. The proverb is alive,
Fox insists, precisely in its potential, like a coin within its “particular
currency system” waiting to be spent (p. 484). While acknowledging that some
proverbs are arranged in “pairs” and “clusters,” suggesting “associative
thinking,” Fox sees no overall design in the collections, as others have.
Proverbs, rather, is like “a heap of jewels” in “sweet disorder” (p. 481).
Many of these
“jewels” share common shapes. Fox helpfully refers to these shared structuresas
“templates.” Exact repetition among proverbs is rare; variation is the norm.
Among the wide array, Fox is able to distill certain commonalities of form and
language. These templates figure in the process of “proverb permutation,” a
literary evolution of syntax and wording that leads to the production of new
proverbs, “a creative dialectic between the old and the new” (p. 489). A
wonderful contemporary example cited by Fox is John F. Kennedy’s famous
aphorism, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country” (p. 492). The saying was not created ex
nihilo but based on a much older proverb template shared by Calvin Coolidge,
King George VI, and Kahlil Gibran. Authorship loses its pertinence in the
evolutionary life of proverbs. A related strength of Fox’s commentary is his
analysis of poetic parallelism. Though proverbial couplets come in small
packages, they can generate a range of subtle relationships between their paired
lines. Many are “disjointed”: they leave a gap that the reader is invited to
fill in various ways. Others exhibit more obvious, banal connections; they were
“stamped out mechanically” (p. 489).
While exploring
the intricate and frequently provocative details of individual proverbs, Fox does
not entirely lose the forest for the trees. He dates the collections in chs.
10–29 to the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., a time of literacy expansion
and monarchic rule. Royal ideology runs rampant throughout these collections.
Given the
nature of Proverbs, most of Fox’s commentary is devoted to discussing
individual sayings. Two to three paragraphs of discussion, on average, cover
each proverb. The textually difficult ones receive more attention.
Occasionally, Fox discusses several together (e.g., 16:1–9, 10–15, 27–30),
because they exhibit “thematic clustering.” Fox discusses variations among
textual versions, engages the opinions of others, and notes connections and
parallels with other proverbs, both biblical and extra-biblical. Proverbs
22:17–23:11 constitute an expansive unit, which Fox appropriately calls the
“Amenemope Collection,” adapted from a particular corpus of Egyptian wisdom
literature.
The final
chapters of Proverbs consist of four “appendices,” including “the words of
Agur” (30:1–9) and the “woman of strength” (31:10–31). The oracle of Agur is an
anomaly in Proverbs, precisely because Agur professes himself to be the most
ignorant of men. Fox argues that Agur confesses his lack of the knowledge of
God, a “specialized, esoteric knowledge of God’s ways, a knowledge accessible
only . . . to an elect few” (p. 855). Fox calls such knowledge “erudition” (p.
861), although the term seems misapplied. The knowledge to which Agur refers is
more esoteric than learned. Agur’s oracle is a “cautionary response to the
exaltation of wisdom” in Proverbs. For Agur, the fear of the LORD is not the
beginning but the replacement of wisdom (p. 957).
While Fox as a
rule gives definitive answers and powerful solutions to a host of exegetical cruxes
that have plagued wisdom scholarship, he does on occasion admit his own
bewilderment. His treatment of Prov 30:18–19(20) is telling, a passage meant to
evoke a sense of wonder about snakes, ships, and sex. On the one hand, he
admits to treating this passage “as a lyrical and romantic evocation of the
wonder of love” (p. 871). (But, I ask, how does that pertain to ships?) On the other
hand, as suggested by rabbinic interpreters, Fox wonders if the passage is
about the lack of leaving a trace, although how this is applicable to “the way
of a man with a maid” remains unclear. Fox remains wondering, and so do I. But
maybe that is the point. Perhaps some proverbs are simply meant to provoke
wonder. Period.
The final
section of Proverbs has also sparked much debate among scholars. Frequently
labeled the “woman of valor” or more prosaically, “a capable wife” (NRSV), Fox
opts for what I consider to be the most obvious translation, the “woman of
strength.” Drawing from the fine work of Christine Yoder (despite certain
quibbles regarding provenance and dating), Fox argues that the figure profiled
in this final poem is real and not mythical, even though it “contradicts the
modern stereotype of women in ancient, male dominated societies” (p. 900). She
is by no means confined to her domicile; the home is her base of operations as
she buys real estate, produces linen, plants vineyards, and sells her
merchandise. Fox appropriately calls the poem an “encomium,” a form well-known
in Greco-Roman literature (p. 903). In addition, he traces the history of
interpretation from traditional Jewish to Christian to modern allegorical and
feminist interpretations. While noting similarities between the “woman of
strength” and “wisdom,” Fox finds nothing figurative about the former. She
belongs securely “on the map of humanity” kin to the “typical American farm
wife in the nineteenth century” (pp. 911–12). Yet she is also an ideal (p.
916).
So ends Fox’s
commentary, but not his volume. The last 147 pages consist of four essays with topics
that range from wisdom ethics and knowledge to revelation. Sapiential thought,
Fox argues, is based not so much on empiricism as on a “coherence theory of
truth.” By that, Fox means an interrelated system of moral aesthetics. True
enough, but as Fox himself admits, Proverbs gets at its truth by “focus[ing] on
the normal. . . . It sees an orderly world” (p. 975), and that involves some measure
of empirical observation. Although empiricism does not lie at the heart of
wisdom’s method, it does, I would argue, reside at its edge. Finally, Fox gives
a schematic accounting of the development of the concept of wisdom. At its
earliest stage, evidenced in the oldest collections of Proverbs, wisdom remains
pragmatic and prudential. Whereas righteousness is static, wisdom is developmental:
it requires continual learning. In later stages, wisdom becomes increasingly
religious at its core (see 1:7; 2:5–6) and virtuous in its scope. In the final
stage (e.g., 1:20–33; 3:13–20; 8:1–35; 9:1–18), wisdom “transcends the human
mind and permeates all space and all time” (p. 932). The figure of “Lady Wisdom
represents the transcendent universal of wisdom” (p. 933).
These final
essays provide a measure of coherence to the nature of wisdom in Proverbs. I would
have appreciated at least one more essay, a discussion of the literary
coherence of Proverbs as a book. By that, I do not mean charting the various
stages of compositional and redactional growth, which Fox has ably done. I
mean, rather, the overall movement of the book from beginning to end, its “plot.”
What does it mean to read Proverbs in light of its prologue (1:1–7) and introduction
(chs. 1–9)? How does the encomium provide a fitting conclusion to the book?
These questions are left unaddressed, at least overtly.
Given its
length and detail, Fox’s commentary would be too formidable for many readers if
it were not for his highly readable and frequently engaging style. Fox delights
in using metaphor and pithy language, not unlike the sages themselves, to get
his points across. His writing sparkles as much as it resonates with deep
insight. For the time being, Fox’s commentary is the commentary of commentaries
on Proverbs.
William P. Brown
COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
DECATUR, GEORGIA
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