Rightly Understanding God’s Word: Context of Genre, Part 2, by Craig S. Keener

We should also note the “rhetorical function” of proverbs. Ancient sages offered proverbs in short, succinct statements as general principles. Proverbs were poetry (often with the second line contrasting with the first line), and they were short summaries that would not list all possible exceptions to the principles they articulated. They might use humor, hyperbole (rhetorical overstatement), irony, and other means to communicate graphically; proverbs were intended to be memorable and practical, not detailed statements of philosophy and certainly not legal guarantees. We must read them according to the character in which they were written.

We briefly mention some other kinds of wisdom literature. Job and Ecclesiastes both challenge the kind of conventional wisdom in Proverbs: What happens when the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? That the Bible includes these books reminds us that the general principles in Proverbs are principles only, not ironclad guarantees that we can “claim” as if God is obligated to answer them. (He does, however, often answer our prayers of faith, including faith strengthened by such principles. But that is a different matter.) That the Bible also includes such a wide range of perspectives (although not contradictions) also may warn us to keep our own boundaries wide: God may send many Christians to us with different kinds of wisdom, and we should have the wisdom to embrace all kinds of wisdom. We may meet those who tend to be cautious and skeptical (like the cynicism of Ecclesiastes), those who have learned through the sufferings of Job, and those who have seen general principles of God’s faithfulness to the righteous; we should welcome them all, and help them to work together in Christ’s one body, just as different books of the Bible work together in one canon.

 

Romance Literature

Although some psalms may have been used at royal weddings (Ps 45), the largest continuous piece of romance literature in the Bible is the Song of Solomon. Throughout history many interpreters were annoyed that sacred Scripture would devote such attention to so “secular” a topic as marital romance, and so interpreted the song allegorically concerning the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the church. However, the song makes better sense in its literal meaning. Christ’s marriage to the church has some parallels to human romance, but the probable allusions to intercourse, a marital disagreement, and jealousy do not fit that interpretation!

God gave us this song in our Bible because he values marital romance highly and wants husbands and wives to enjoy their love for each other. Some of the romance language that is unfamiliar to us was standard romance language in its day (for instance, Egyptian love songs also celebrate as a romantic setting the coming of spring and the voice of animals emerging at that time—cf. Song 2:12).

Tags: context, craig, genre, gods, keener, part, rightly, understanding, word

Category: Biblical Studies, Summer 2005