A Life That Is Good: The Message of Proverbs in a World Wanting Wisdom by Glenn Pemberton

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Life That Is Good: The Message of Proverbs in a World Wanting Wisdom by Glenn Pemberton Michael S. Moore glenn pemberton, A Life That Is Good: The Message of Proverbs in a World Wanting Wisdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2018). Pp. xviii + 236. $18. The purpose of this book is twofold: (a) to provide a usable resource for "faith-based discussion groups and Bible classes, with secondary consideration for undergraduate university courses on Israel's wisdom literature" (p. xv); and (b) to help such readers learn how to tell the difference between "the good life" championed in Proverbs and the one relentlessly advertised on their television, phone, and computer screens. This intended audience is quite specific, and in many ways this volume is quite different from the books and monographs regularly reviewed in this journal. Even a cursory reading, however, makes clear that this is one of the best new books on Proverbs available to this (or any other) readership. Not only is it eminently readable, but it is carefully structured, an irony given the fact that the structure of Proverbs is so famously difficult to pin down. For this reason Pemberton thinks it appropriate, in view of the amorphous structure of the biblical book, to expose contemporary students to this ancient Hebrew text by cutting it up into digestible fragments or, to use one of his own metaphors, to help them identify which types of "railroad cars" (flatbed, boxcar, refrigeration, livestock, passenger, tankcar) seem best suited to transport which types of "freight" (p. 23). After a pithy introduction explaining what it is that Hebrew sages habitually do (comparing and contrasting their work with that of prophets and priests), P. plunges into that area of interest with which most instructors today are most acutely aware—gender. Avoiding the guild tendency to bog students down in "Goddess Sophia" speculation, P. instead challenges them to appreciate the character and contours of the roles enacted in Proverbs 1–9 by the five women who serve as the primary educators of the book's original audience—young men. These include (a) the young man's mother, (b) the young man's wife, (c) the other woman, (d) the wisdom woman, and (e) the foolish woman (Proverbs 1–9). Attention then turns to Proverbs 10–31 as an assemblage of sapiential responses to five distinct "challenges": (a) absolute vs. conditional meaning; (b) translation and culture; (c) enigma; (d) description vs. prescription; and (e) "the Bible factor" (i.e., the "inspiration" and "authoritativeness" of Proverbs as a religious text). Prolegomena out of the way, P. turns in the next few chapters to questions and concerns [End Page 320] deemed central to Hebrew wisdom generally and Proverbs particularly. The first, cleverly conceived and written, is entitled "Deforming Character: How to Become a Fool." Much like C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, this chapter is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek exposé on how foolmongering develops in individuals over time: (a) stage 1: foolish actions; (b) stage 2: stepping onto the path of folly; (c) stage 3: the hardening; (d) stage 4: collapse and rage. Imaginatively illustrated and skillfully articulated, this chapter might easily stand alone as a separate volume, as might several others in this slim paperback. The next chapter, "What's God Got to Do With It? Searching for God in Proverbs," attempts to explain the Deus absconditus climate of Proverbs by laying out the argument of Klaus Koch that God has no need to be directly involved ("Is There A Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?," in Theodicy in the Old Testament [ed. James L. Crenshaw; Issues in Religion and Theology 4; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983] 60-61) alongside that of William McKane that the book's oldest layer is fundamentally secular, not religious (Proverbs: A New Approach [OTL; London: SPCK, 1970] 10-22). P.'s response to this debate is to insist that, whatever position one takes, the "key phrase distinguishing the book of Proverbs from collections of advice for 'the good life' at local bookstores is 'the fear of the Lord'"—a phrase he wants to see as the "golden thread holding Proverbs together" (p. 86). The next chapter ("Justice and Mercy...