Should you borrow money? What about gossip? Should you co-sign a loan? What kind of person should you marry? Proverbs answers questions like these — not in principle, but specifically, one line at a time, on nearly every practical matter a life actually turns on.

That is the surprising thing about it. This is the book that came out of the wisdom God gave Solomon when he asked for it (II Chronicles 1:10) — and it does not deal with what we might be tempted to call the spiritual things of life. It deals with our relations with our neighbours, our business dealings, and our family life. It is in exactly those areas that God’s wisdom shows itself.

What the book says it is for

Proverbs is one of the few books that opens by stating its own purpose:

The proverbs of Solomon, David’s son who was king of Israel, given to grasp wisdom and discipline, to understand deep thoughts, to acquire the discipline of wise behavior— righteousness and justice and fairness— to give insight to gullible people, to give knowledge and foresight to the young.

Proverbs 1:1–4  ·  God’s Word

Note who it is addressed to: gullible people and the young. This is a book for anyone who has not yet learned the hard way. And it says immediately where wisdom starts:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Stubborn fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Proverbs 1:7  ·  God’s Word

Should you borrow money?

A rich person rules poor people, and a borrower is a slave to a lender.

Proverbs 22:7  ·  God’s Word

That is not a prohibition. It is a description of what debt does to the relationship between two people, stated without softening.

Should you guarantee someone else’s loan?

Here the book is far more alarmed than most readers expect, and it comes back to the subject repeatedly. Proverbs worries more about co-signing than about borrowing.

My son, if you guarantee a loan for your neighbor or pledge yourself for a stranger with a handshake, you are trapped by the words of your own mouth, caught by your own promise… Free yourself like a gazelle from the hand of a hunter and like a bird from the hand of a hunter.

Proverbs 6:1–5  ·  God’s Word

The advice is not to think it over. It is to get out, tonight, and to humble yourself and pester the neighbour until you are released. Elsewhere: “Whoever guarantees a stranger’s loan will get into trouble” (11:15), and “If you have no money to pay back a loan, why should your bed be repossessed?” (22:26–27).

What about gossip?

Five separate proverbs, each attacking it from a different side:

• “Whoever gossips gives away secrets, but whoever is trustworthy in spirit can keep a secret” — 11:13
• “A gossip separates the closest of friends” — 16:28
• “The words of a gossip are swallowed greedily, and they go down into a person’s innermost being” — 18:8
• “Do not associate with a person whose mouth is always open” — 20:19
• “Without wood a fire goes out, and without gossip a quarrel dies down” — 26:20

Notice that the last one puts the responsibility on the listener as much as the talker. A quarrel needs fuel. You can decline to be the fuel.

What kind of person should you marry?

Who can find a wife with a strong character? She is worth far more than jewels. Her husband trusts her with all his heart, and he does not lack anything good. She helps him and never harms him all the days of her life.

Proverbs 31:10–12  ·  God’s Word

And alongside it, the plain ones: “a sensible wife comes from the LORD” (19:14); “a wife with strength of character is the crown of her husband” (12:4); and, with the book’s usual refusal to be romantic about it, “Better to live on a corner of a roof than to share a home with a quarreling woman” (21:9).

And on, and on

The same treatment is given to almost everything else:

Who actually wrote it

Solomon is named at the head of the book and again at 10:1, and he is its principal voice. But the book is honest that he is not the only one, and it says so in its own headings:

• “The words of wise people” — an anonymous collection at 22:17, and a second one at 24:23.
• “Solomon’s proverbs that were copied by the men of King Hezekiah of Judah” (25:1) — Hezekiah reigned some two and a half centuries after Solomon. The book records its own editing without the least embarrassment.
• Agur son of Jakeh (30:1) and King Lemuel (31:1) — neither of whom appears anywhere else in Scripture.

So the accurate sentence is that Proverbs is Solomon’s book, but not only Solomon’s. And that fits what the book is: wisdom presented as true wherever it is found, gathered over centuries, tested by living.

Where it points

Solomon received wisdom as a gift and used it in every area of life except the one that mattered most — his own walk with God. The book he left is better than the life he lived, which is worth remembering as you read it.

And the wisdom the book is reaching for finally arrives as a person. In the New Testament, God’s wisdom is made known to us in the Lord Jesus Christ — “Jesus has become our wisdom sent from God” (I Corinthians 1:30). And when we are born again He enters our lives, to be God’s wisdom lived in and through us. That wise life has a name:

But the spiritual nature produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There are no laws against things like that.

Galatians 5:22–23  ·  God’s Word

Read the list beside the table above and you are looking at the same wisdom twice: once as advice a person has to learn, and once as fruit the Spirit grows.

Where to go from here

Read it. Proverbs has thirty-one chapters, which is a month of days — a chapter each morning is the oldest and still the best way through it. Start at chapter 1 in God’s Word. About four minutes a day.

And then make every effort to apply its wisdom to your daily decisions. This is not a book to admire. It is a book to use.

Read next: Ecclesiastes — the same man, at the end of his life, reckoning up what it all came to.