Three books in the canonical Hebrew Bible are considered works of wisdom literature: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. In these books, “wisdom” is not aged experience or knowledge of scholarly tomes but rather the practical skill of life. In the wisdom literature, wise people are wise because they can discern, in natural and social patterns, what’s necessary for successful living, whereas foolish people disregard these patterns to their own ruin. The definition of “wisdom” is very similar in all three books, but Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes disagree about the desirability and accessibility of wisdom.
In Proverbs, which is a collection of short wisdom sayings frequently cast as advice from father to son, wisdom is portrayed as both desirable and accessible. Wisdom is more valuable than wealth and protects us from danger (Proverbs 3:14–15, 21–26), and wisdom widely advertises itself, personified as a woman who shouts at passersby from a city street corner (Proverbs 1:20–33).
In Job, by contrast, wisdom is desirable but not accessible. After a bet between God and Satan about whether or not Job’s perfect piety is genuine or the result of all his good fortune, Job loses everything and spends the rest of the book debating his friends about whether or not he deserved it. Every character in Job believes themselves to be wise and appeals to basic tenets of the wisdom tradition, conveying that wisdom is desirable. But a poem in Job 28 affirms that only God knows where wisdom is. The fact that the characters in Job don’t know why he’s suffering, but the reader does, adds to this impression that wisdom is forever beyond our reach.
Ecclesiastes differs still further, affirming that wisdom is accessible but not desirable: “For in much wisdom is much vexation” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). In a similar vein, Ecclesiastes 12:12b almost undermines the whole book: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness for the flesh.”
Tips for Interpreting Wisdom Sayings
Perhaps nothing is as quotable in the Hebrew Bible as its wisdom literature, which often comes in the form of concise and memorable little sayings ready to be deployed whenever the occasion calls. Whether warnings for fools or guidelines for the wise, wisdom sayings require us to be attentive to what works practically in day-to-day life. While other kinds of biblical literature are concerned with abstract and spiritual concepts, wisdom sayings tend to focus more on the concrete challenges of life. What do I say? What do I do? What do I spend my time on? What should I pursue? The wise are the ones who know these things, and with some tips, you can know them too.
- Think About Timing
Wisdom sayings are fundamentally oral in nature. By that we mean that, while people might at times read them or read about them, they were meant to be used spontaneously in conversation, in moments where they apply. Imagine someone writing down the famous English saying, “A stitch in time saves nine.” That saying doesn’t do anyone any good written down. However, when someone who knows the saying recognizes a situation in which the saying is applicable, they can repeat it and act on it. The same is true for many of the sayings in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
This is also why these sayings occasionally contradict, like Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5, which offer opposite advice about how to deal with foolish people. A wise person is a person who knows which wisdom saying to apply at which time. Sometimes you do need to answer a fool according to their folly, and sometimes you don’t. In the same way, a wise person would know in a given situation whether to apply the saying “A stitch in time saves nine” or “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” even though these sayings offer opposing advice. “There’s a time for everything,” Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, and that includes a time for each of these wisdom sayings.
For this reason, when we’re interpreting wisdom sayings, we should be asking ourselves which of these sayings could be useful, rather than regarding any one of them, or all of them, as absolute truths.
- Imagine a Debate
The three canonical books of wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, perhaps more than other texts in other genres, are actively involved in debating one another. As described earlier in the chapter, each text has a very different idea of the desirability and accessibility of wisdom, and each one dramatizes these competing ideas with their narratives.
Given this, one set of interpretive questions we can ask about these texts concerns the pros and cons of their positions: How desirable is wisdom? How accessible is it? Which text makes the best case for its answers to these questions? Which makes the worst?
Since the texts themselves are debating, we are invited to debate along with them.
Conclusion
While the multivocality of the Bible is noticeable in several places, once you know what to look for, it’s especially noticeable in the great diversity of contrasting and debating literature we see in the Writings. They say variety is the spice of life, and if that’s true, then the Writings are the spice of the Hebrew Bible.
In Jewish tradition, the Hebrew Bible ends with 2 Chronicles, when the Jewish people were allowed to return to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity in 538 BCE. In Christian tradition, the Old Testament instead ends with the book of Malachi, which anticipates a messenger to prepare the way (Malachi 3:1) and the figure of Elijah to herald the day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5), images the Gospels associate with John the Baptist. Both endings to the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament look forward to the future and what God will do next for humanity, and so in their own ways, both texts end on an optimistic note.
The willingness to be receptive to what God is doing despite the trials and tribulations we face, is one of the greatest and most unifying virtues of the entire Bible. Just like eating a big meal can signal that someone is on the mend, or sharing a meal together can signal reconciliation, being ready to turn the page of the Bible to what’s next is a healthy thing. Right now, we’re turning the page to the New Testament.
Excerpted from Serving Up Scripture: How to Interpret the Bible for Yourself and Others by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw and Aaron Higashi. Copyright © 2026 Broadleaf Books. Reproduced by permission.
