Tremper Longman III, The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom: A Theological Introduction to Wisdom in Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017)
-Though God created with wisdom, meaning there is order, because of the fall, there is some disorder, but still lots of order.
-scholars in studying Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes do it in light of Creation History- as in a creation before the fall- in complete order.
-Proverbs are meant to be used in the right context, right time. That is why they often contradict each other, but read in the right context/time, they make sense.
ex. Prov 26:4-5=Don’t answer fools according to their stupidity; otherwise, you will become like them yourself. Answer fools according to their stupidity; otherwise, they will become wise in their own eyes.
-Anybody can memorize the proverbs, but if they don’t apply them correctly, they are useless.
Prov 26:7 =The legs of a lame person dangle, and a proverb in the mouth of fools.
-Proverbs are guidelines, not absolutes, unlike the Law.
-The bottom line, again, is that proverbs embed instruction that takes great skill, wisdom, to use correctly. We must be aware that no single proverb expresses the whole truth about a matter and that proverbs may have multiple meanings depending on the context. While this sounds complex, it is also true that when someone utters a proverb that is right for the situation, it is immediately recognized as true. (Longman III pg.140)
-The book of Job presents a thought experiment that illustrates that wisdom does not always lead to a tranquil or successful life. The same is true for the book of Ecclesiastes, where we saw in chapter 2 that Qohelet, while acknowledging a limited benefit to wisdom, ultimately felt that death rendered wisdom no better than folly (2:12–17). Indeed, the fact that God made the world so that there was a right season for everything under the sun just led to increased frustration on Qohelet’s part since he felt that God did not give his human creatures the ability to discern the proper time (3:1–15). While the frame narrator points his son to what we called an “above the sun” perspective (fear God, obey his commandments, and live in light of the future judgment), he does not challenge Qohelet’s view that “under the sun” life is meaningless. All this is a selective review of our earlier studies of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Contra many depictions of the relationship between these three books, Job and Ecclesiastes are not criticizing the message of Proverbs; they rather are a canonical corrective to an overreading of the book that apparently was an ancient error as well as a modern one (e.g., the prosperity gospel) (Longman III pg.141)
Paul sees things differently. In light of the fall and of future hope:
-I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it. (8:18–20a, emphasis added) The word “frustration” (mataiotes) connects his comment here with the book of Ecclesiastes since it is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word translated “meaningless” (hebel) in the Greek OT. Paul, however, reveals why the creation is meaningless—“it was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it.” Paul here clearly alludes to the account of the fall in Gen. 3. God subjected the creation to frustration in response to the rebellion of Adam and Eve. Thus, when we think of wisdom’s connection to creation theology, it is wrong-minded to think only of Gen. 1–2. To the extent that wisdom is related to creation theology, it does not return us to Eden but recognizes that we live in a troubled, disordered world (Longman III. Pg. 141-142)
-God does not eradicate chaos and evil, but he does control it in a way that Job, or for that matter any human, could not possibly do. In the very next section, he goes on to challenge Job by saying: In your days, have you commanded the morning? Can you inform the dawn of its place so it grabs the edges of the earth, so the wicked can be shaken out of it? The earth is transformed like clay by a seal impression, and its features stand out like a garment. Light is held back from the wicked, and their upheld arm is broken. (38:12–15) God, not Job, commands the morning, and in this way he controls but does not remove evil. The earth here is likened to a seal impression on soft clay. When a seal is stamped on or rolled across the clay, it produces depressions and raised areas similar to the hills and valleys of the surface of the earth. As the light dawns from the edge of the earth, it sheds its light across the surface of the earth, and then, using another analogy, God shakes evildoers out of commission (at least until the next night) like a person shakes the dirt off a garment. The relevant point for our discussion is that the connection between wisdom and creation and order is not as simple as some would make it out to be. It is not simply a matter of if one is wise, then one knows how the creation works, since God created the world ordered. The wise understand that creation order has been disturbed, and therefore it does not always work as one might expect (Longman III pg. 143-144).
-It is not that the world is so disturbed that God’s creation is totally distorted. It often functions as it should but not exactly as it was intended, thanks to human rebellion.
-The world, though broken, is not shattered beyond recognition, and God’s human creatures, though deeply flawed, are not insane. Wisdom remains accessible to all, at least to a certain point. That certain point, though, falls short of theological wisdom. The unbeliever does not, in the words of Oliver O’Donovan, have to be “ignorant about the structure of the family, the virtue of mercy, the vice of cowardice, or the duty of justice,” but by definition the unbeliever remains ignorant of what is the most fundamental and essential truth of the cosmos—that God created it and that everything is dependent on him. While one can live with wisdom on a practical and perhaps even on an ethical level, without fear of the Lord there is, in the final analysis, no foundation to that wisdom (Longman III. Pg. 146)