The Book of Proverbs

Proverbs is one biblical book that is better to take in small doses, rather than read straight through. That being said, there have been some recent scholarship on the composition and redaction of the book of Proverbs that suggests it was not compiled haphazardly (see Whybray’s The Composition of the Book of Proverbs [JSOT Press, 1994] or Van Leeuwen’s Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25-27 [Society of Biblical Literature, 1988).

When we turn to commentaries on the book of Proverbs there are a lot of different options. Murphy is one of the preeminent scholars on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. His three works on Proverbs are all worth consulting, though his WBC is perhaps the best of his work. Fox is also excellent for scholars and pastors, as is Clifford. I would be remiss to not mention the excellent — and very detailed — commentary by one of my former professors, Bruce Waltke. I highly recommend it. Hubbard is a good popular commentary, and I have been impressed with Farmer and Koptak. Wright‘s volume is invaluable for a historical perspective.

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