Rules for Interpreting Wisdom Literature | Rapp Report Daily 0063 | Striving for Eternity

Welcome to The Rapid Pull, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Wisdom Literature in Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes

This week we've been examining the different styles of literature in the Bible and the rules that each of them have in interpretation. Today I'd like to address the one of wisdom literature. Wisdom literature is one you're going to see in the book of Job.

You're going to see much, if not all, of the book of Proverbs and even Ecclesiastes contain wisdom literature. Now wisdom literature is one of the more difficult ones to interpret, and it is very similar and requires an understanding of the Hebrew poetry that we dealt with earlier this week.

Parallelism, Comparisons, and Contrasts in Wisdom Literature

Now as we look at wisdom literature, we will see the parallelism that we see in Hebrew poetry that we already addressed. But there's other things that are going to help in understanding the meaning of wisdom.

Literature.

You want to look for comparisons throughout the Proverbs. The fool is compared with the wise, the poor with the rich. Throughout you're going to see those kind of comparisons. You're going to see the contrasts.

Metaphors, Similes, and the Difference Between Principles and Promises

Look for metaphors and similes. These are some of the key things that give us the interpretation. You'll also see in wisdom literature sometimes either portraits or vignettes, and those are going to, again, be something that is not necessarily trying to teach a specific doctrine, but understand that wisdom literature, specifically in Proverbs, are generalities.

They're not promises. They're general principles that usually work. Don't take wisdom literature as a promise for you today, because it's not a promise, it's a principle.

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