I have had a wonderful time working my way through Proverbs 1-9 recently. Part of the reason that the labor has been so enjoyable is that I have been refreshing my own knowledge of the various aspects of this part of the Book of Proverbs. I have always found Proverbs 1-9 to be fascinating; the interplay between Lady Wisdom and the forbidden woman, the father and the son, the My Son poems and the various interludes, are all intriguing. When I read through Proverbs 1-9 recently I noticed a pattern in the first several poems that I would like to wax eloquent about for a few sentences. I will then wildly speculate about what this pattern might indicate. I’m sure some of you will be kind enough to correct me in the comments thread, and I welcome this.
To begin, it might be wise to establish a few assumptions that I’m making. The foremost of these is that repetition is an aid in learning. The more a teacher repeats something, the more likely a student is to remember it. A second assumption that I’ve made is that Proverbs 1-9, in its received form, has been shaped and that there is a reason and/or logic to this shaping. That is not to say that scholars completely understand this reason, but such a reason existed in the mind of the redactor/writer/editor.
Turning to the text itself, the intriguing pattern I was referring to is the tendency, early on in the poems of Proverbs 1-9, to conclude a poem with a summary statement concerning the fate of the wise over against the fate of the wicked. This juxtaposition of the wise and the fool occurs in 1.19 (but only concerning the fool), 1.32-33, 2.21-22, and (possibly) 3.32-35. Each of these sections deal somehow with the fate of the wicked, and most also deal with the fate of the wise as contrasted with that of the fool. Furthermore, each of them reinforces the doctrine of retribution as the governing law of life.
The first three poems (My Son poem #1, Interlude A, and My Son poem #2) all conclude with such statements. The final statement, in 3.32-35, comes at the end of a My Son poem, though Interlude B and My Son poem #3 both lack a similar concluding proverb. What I think may be going on here is that the editor is using these statements as a kind of pedagogical tool.
What I mean by this is that the summary statements serve to do exactly that: summarize the poems that have come before. By repeating similar statements, or at least statements with a similar moral, at the end of the first three poems, the editor is driving home the point that A) each of these poems is, to some extent, saying the same thing and B) obedience==blessing while disobedience==cursing (cf. Deut. 28). The end of chapter three would then serve to again drive home this point. Interestingly these verses juxtapose the wise and foolish in a somewhat unique way (when compared with the other verses listed above); line A of each verse discusses the negative things which YHVH will do to the foolish while line B contrasts the positive things which YHVH will do for the upright. Perhaps also worth mentioning is the fact that these verses represent the first cluster of antithetically parallel verses in Proverbs. That may or may not be significant. I haven’t decided.
By means of conclusion, I think that the various summary statements in Proverbs 1.19, 1.32-33, 2.21-22 and 3.32-35 are intended to drive home a very specific point to the reader. On the one hand it is the point that each of the poems makes in a more specific and verbose way: obedience to YHVH==blessing while disobedience==cursing. As for why the statements cease after the first few poems, my off-the-cuff theory is that having firmly established the point, the editor feels free to begin allowing the specifics of the poems themselves to take center stage. Not that this wasn’t taking place before, but the summary statements certainly draw ones attention back to the overarching point which is being irrespective of the specific content of each poem.