Review of David Penchansky, Understanding Wisdom Literature

David Penchansky, Understanding Wisdom LiteratureReview by Martin A. Shields

David Penchansky is professor of theology at the University of St omas, Saint Paul,Minnesota. In Understanding Wisdom Literature he aims — according to the coverdescription — to focus on the “big picture” behind wisdom literature. e book ex-amines the primary biblical wisdom texts — Proverbs, Job, and Qoheleth (Ecclesiast-es) — as well as Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon. e inclusion of this last text isa little surprising given the work’s reference to “in the Hebrew Text” in its subtitle,but is useful in plotting the trajectory of wisdom in early Judaism. P’s book is alsobrief — 129 pages including the bibliography, index, as well as a 10 page introductionwhich primarily consists of a brief synopsis of each of the subsequent chapters. ework has very limited direct interaction with secondary literature — the “Subject andAuthor” index is less than two pages, so the vast majority of works included in thebibliography are never explicitly referenced.1

P has an engaging style and his work raises many challenging and interesting ideaswhich push the reader to wrestle with issues that are all too often ignored by biblicalscholars, and to wrestle with the biblical (and post-biblical) texts themselves. is re-view will proceed by examining each of Penchansky’s chapters and conclude with asummary evaluation of the entire book.

1 Who Are e Sages?Penchansky begins his discussion of the identity of the sages with an appeal to popu-lar literature:

1. e bibliography also has some odd features — while my book is not referenced, a short review of itby Harold C. Washington is listed. I have written a response to Washington’s review, available athttp://blog.shields-online.net/?p=155.

e sage, or wizard, takes prominent place in the stories of many cultures.From Merlin, Gandalf, and Dumbledore in the Anglo-Americantradition…2

is is not particularly helpful since these “wizards” are not, in contemporarythought, predominantly associated with wisdom of the type generally found in theBible. Appealing to them as examples of sages does as much to obfuscate as to clarifyand ends up sounding more like an attempt to gain traction with a modern audiencethan adequately describe the sage in the ancient world.Beyond this, however, Penchansky offers a good explanation of the place of sages inthe Bible, highlighting the generally negative attitude most of the text reflects. Hedoes not, however, go far enough — failing to note the way that both Job and Qo-helet themselves are strongly critical of the sages and the wisdom movement.3

2 What Unity in Proverbs?Penchansky admits that, for him, the most problematical part of the Wisdom Literat-ure is the book of Proverbs. He identifies three different streams in the work whichhe labels the “fear God” sages (cf. Prov 1:7) and the “get wisdom” sages (cf. Prov 4:7).While these two groups share many common presuppositions, P summarises theirdifferences thus:

e sages ask whether it is possible to know how to live. e “Get Wis-dom” group says yes, through careful observation of both the natural worldand the human community. e “Fear Yahweh” group says no, God over-rules human plans and human insight, and ultimately wisdom cannot befound, but is clouded in deep mystery. (24)

e third major voice P detects in Proverbs is that of Woman Wisdom whom heidentifies as an Israelite goddess, depicted by the text as Yahweh’s daughter (31).

2. p. 11. I feel “Anglo-American” could really have just been “Anglo” given that the examples are all fromthe U.K.!

3. For a more complete discussion of the matter, see Shields, e End of Wisdom, 7–20.

Martin A. Shields — review of David Penchansky, Understanding Wisdom Literature

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For P, the first two groups are “manifestly wrongheaded” (32), bound to eitherabandoning wisdom in the face of God’s arbitrariness or else to an inflexible under-standing of the cosmos which ultimately fails to account for reality. How these integ-rate with the divine daughter of Yahweh also escapes P, although he clearly believesthat the existence of such a character has implications for our understanding of Is-raelite monotheism (33). In the end, he admits that reconciling these streams is bey-ond him.Reading Proverbs and then P’s analysis one is left with the impression that perhapshe has imposed an overly rigid grid over his reading of the text. ere is no indica-tion either within the text itself or in the history of interpretation that these incom-patible positions are actually present. Was the editor or author of the final form ofthe work oblivious to the problems created by juxtaposing such materials? atseems a rather ungenerous position to take — assuming that the modern reader ismore discerning than the ancient editor who was immersed within the culture thatproduced the text. Perhaps such problems should signal an issue with our readingrather than with the author/editors, particularly when alternate ways of reading thedo not pose the same difficulties. It makes better sense to note that the diverse arrayof material reflects the very nature of wisdom, particularly wisdom expressedprimarily through aphorisms as it is in Proverbs. Bruce Waltke puts it well:

e sage teaches truth through aphorisms… [which] concentrate or distilltruth and so by their nature cannot express the whole truth about a topic…[r]ather, it is a single component of truth that must be fit together with ot-her elements of truth in order to approximate the more comprehensive,confused pattern of real life.4

us we must ask whether Prov 1:7 and 4:7 really expressions of different, incompat-ible positions as P maintains — or do they reflect different sides of the same coin?e exhortation to “get wisdom” clearly needs expansion — how should one “get wis-dom”? e answer, according to Proverbs, begins with “fear Yahweh.” e nature ofwisdom requires that the sage move beyond treating aphorisms as comprehensiveaccounts of the nature of the universe, for to do so is to fail to grapple with theriddles of the sages (Prov 1:6).

4. Waltke, Proverbs 1–15, 38.


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Consequently P’s treatment of the book of Proverbs overstates the dissonancethrough a failure to appreciate the nature of the material. It is quite clear from thebook of Proverbs itself that the material it presents cannot be treated as simplisticedicts but that their interpretation requires subtlety and discernment in spite of theapparent simplicity of the aphoristic form.5 e case for P’s reading of Proverbswould be enhanced had he engaged with this approach to the text.

3 e Meaning of the Book of JobP raises important questions about the nature of God as depicted in the book ofJob — questions he is not alone in asking, but questions which are nonethelessignored by many scholars. e issue of God’s character is succinctly highlighted onpage 39:

e Satan had tricked Yahweh into sinning when he consented to afflictJob in a useless, gratuitous act of cruelty. After Yahweh realized what anevil thing he had done, allowing Job to suffer just so he could win a bet, theSatan convinces him to do it again, only worse. With Yahweh’s permission,the Satan covers Job with loathsome sores over his whole body and leaveshim scratching himself on an ash dump. Yahweh in the story is gullible andimpulsive, capable of thoughtless cruelty in order to win in an intellectualargument with his friend.

is reading of the book’s depiction of Yahweh’s character, however, is not withoutserious problems. Quite aside from how this slipped by all the early interpreters andthe absence of such language describing Yahweh’s behaviour in Job, it overlooks anumber of indications that the back story recounted in Job 1–2 was never intendedto provide a comprehensive rationale for Job’s suffering.6 Furthermore, given the im-plicit identification of Yahweh with the remainder of the biblical traditions, there arelegitimate grounds for the reader to infer details about Yahweh’s character from theremainder of the Hebrew Bible. Consequently, where there is ambiguity or uncer-

5. Prov 26 preserves a number of aphorisms which point in this direction.6. For a complete discussion of this see Martin Shields, “Malevolent or Mysterious? God’s Character in

the Prologue of Job,” Tyndale Bulletin 61.2 (2010) 255–270.


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tainty in reading the text, the most natural inference in light of the historical and cul-tural context out of which Job arises is to favour that reading which aligns God’scharacter with that revealed in the remainder of the Bible.P proposes reading the entire work through the words found in Job 42:7 — “… youhave not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” For P this is an affirma-tion of Yahweh’s guilt — as he explains:

Yahweh’s endorsement of Job’s side in the argument throws the entire in-terpretation of the book of Job into a tailspin. Job’s speech accuses God offailing in his governance of the universe, because he persecuted Job like aravening monster. Yahweh endorses this particular message as the truthabout him. e friends argued that it was impossible for God to ever be inthe wrong. ey defended God’s integrity and justice. Yahweh declaresthose statements to be not true. (47)

ere are, however, problems with P’s reading of the book of Job as a whole. For one,he omits important sections altogether — including the very centre of the book itself,the poem about hidden wisdom in Job 28. ere is also no mention of the characterElihu and his extensive speech in the second half of the book. When making Yah-weh’s declaration of Job 42:7 his hermeneutical key, he does so without consideringthat the words of Job to which Yahweh may have been referring were those most im-mediately on view — Job’s final response in Job 42:1–6. erein lies Job’s admissionthat he has spoken hastily and only now has come to realise how little he under-stands of the task of supervising and governing the universe. He there admits lackingknowledge and understanding — essentially lacking wisdom for these are funda-mental constituents of Hebrew wisdom — while the friends have consistently in-sisted upon the certainty of their own belief that divine retribution was immutable.

4 Wisdom, Madness, and Folly: e ree QohelethsP identifies three distinct voices in the book of Ecclesiastes: pessimistic Qoheleth;fear God Qoheleth; and Enjoy Life Qoheleth. While scholars have long recognisedthe presence of contradictions within Qoheleth’s words, P’s analysis tends to exagger-ate the dissonance. For example, disassociating the “pessimistic” Qoheleth from the“enjoy life” Qoheleth fails to recognise that the “enjoy life” affirmations in the text


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arise quite plainly out of resignation that itself arises out of Qoheleth’s pessimisticrealisation that nothing makes sense — all is hebel. Qoheleth observes that there isno moral order to the universe that he can observe, so the only advice he can offer isto enjoy life when and where you can.While P acknowledges that many recognise that Qoheleth’s “fear God” exhortationscarry a quite distinct connotation to those found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (55).Nonetheless, passages which appear to affirm some form of divine, probably eschata-logical, judgment demonstrate, for P, that there is a voice to be heard which doesconnect human behaviour with reward or punishment, and this contradicts the viewof “pessimistic Qoheleth” who denies any such connection.P’s analysis, however, fails to explore all the possible approaches which may amelior-ate the discord he identifies. For one, the frame narrator (who, for all intents andpurposes, is the author of the final form of the book) directs us as readers to hear asingle voice, the words of Qoheleth. Second, the frame narrator guides us to recogn-ise that all Qoheleth has to say leads to the conclusion that “all is hebel” — sincethese words are quoted at both the introduction to and conclusion of Qoheleth’swords. e author is thus leading us as readers to read in a certain way and not inother ways, to make inferences which fall in line with these directions rather than inother directions that the ambiguities of Qoheleth’s words may also, on their own,allow.ird, P presumes that allusions or references to divine judgment refer to a judgmentcarried out according to criteria known to both Qoheleth and to us. But that is con-trary to Qoheleth’s position. While it is clear from Qoheleth’s words that he affirms ahigh view of divine sovereignty, it is also clear that he has no definitive understand-ing of the basis upon which God makes the decisions he makes. e only definitivewarning he gives, in Eccl 5:3–5 [E: 5:4–6], amounts to “don’t deliberately try and an-noy God.” Otherwise he makes no explicit claims to knowledge about what beha-viours result in divine favour or divine curse.


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5 Sounds of Silence: e Absence of Covenantal eology in the WisdomLiteratureIn the fifth chapter of the book, P reviews possible reasons for the absence of refer-ences to the covenant within the biblical Wisdom Literature. He also argues, basedon a review of terminology and concepts common to covenantal texts, a lack of anyconnection between them and the Wisdom Literature. He proposes four possibletheories for the absence of such connections in the Wisdom Literature: (1) the WL issympathetic but silent; (2) the sages held the covenants in disdain and thus avoidedmentioning them; (3) similar to the previous but the sages’ silence was motivated byfear of persecution; and (4) the “special covenant claims of ancient Israel are sectari-an disputes of little concern to them” (82). is last option is P’s preferred option forwhich he offers the justification: “[i]t is plausible psychologically, and it provides arich textured view of Israelite society…” (83).It is difficult not to feel that P reads his own predilections and ideals back into thebiblical text when reaching these conclusions. He overlooks at least one profound di-fficulty: how did such discrepant material come to be accepted among the group ofbooks which constitute the Hebrew Bible? It is not sufficient to say that his approachavoids a monolithic reconstruction of ancient Israelite society — the Hebrew Bible isnot that society, but a collection of texts which arose out of parts of that society.He also misrepresents the evidence. First, the silence is not so significant as he pro-poses. Job and Ecclesiastes are largely anti-wisdom, probably even polemical in theircontent. While Qoheleth never appeals to the covenant or the Torah, Ecclesiastes asa book does. Qoheleth establishes the limits of wisdom without himself proposingany means to move beyond those limits (as P himself acknowledges on page 84), butthe epilogue — while affirming Qoheleth’s conclusion — moves the reader further bydefining the ultimate task of people to be to “fear God and keep his commandments.”is is a statement never affirmed by Qoheleth, but which is built upon Qoheleth’srepudiation of wisdom as a means to find the profit in life (furthermore, it is adviceapparently heeded by Sirach who does indeed seek wisdom from the Torah). Job,too, pushes the reader beyond the constraints of traditional wisdom by having therepresentatives of that movement — the three friends of Job — declared wrong by noless than Yahweh. Some wisdom, according to the book of Job, is hidden from hu-man sight.


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So while P addresses a problem long recognised in studies of biblical Wisdom Liter-ature, it is difficult to see how his solution adequately deals with the evidence.

6 Sophia and Simon: e Two Poles of Ben Sira’s AffectionP argues that Sirach moves in a new direction when compared to the biblical wisdomliterature: “in Ben Sira’s most influential turn, he connects Sophia with Torah. Nosage before him ever dreamed of doing such a thing.” is is half right: Sirach’s wis-dom is inextricably connected with the Torah. But he is half wrong: Qoheleth’s framenarrator had done exactly this in response to Qoheleth’s discovery that wisdom alonehad decisively failed to answer the key question he sought to answer. Outside thewisdom corpus, such a connection had also been made in (for example) Deut 4:6. Toclaim, as P does, that Sirach wrote as if Job and Qoheleth had never existed, is incor-rect. Job and Qoheleth highlight the failure of both speculative wisdom and strict ad-herance to the notion of retributive justice, and Qoheleth’s epilogue points in thevery direction that Sirach had proceeded and which was itself made explicit in thePentateuch — obedience to God’s commands.P divides Sirach into two “poles”: Sophia, which focuses on the wisdom derived fromthe observance of the Torah; and ‘Simon’, his sycophantic (according to P) exaltationof Simon II, High Priest in Jerusalem c. 219–196 . P argues that Sirach’s treatmentof Simon forms a major element in the book, and of this he is highly critical:

To give this backwater, petty religious dictator the most prominent place ina list that includes Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jeremiah isBen Sira’s most spectacular gaffe. e absolute climax of the book points toa figure that history regards as undistinguished. (92)

It is worth noting that Simon is only mentioned in Sir 50, although a number schol-ars argue that this chapter forms the apex of the extended piece in praise of the an-cestors extending from Sir 44–50.P is doubtless correct in noting the inferior nature of much of Sirach’s wisdom whencompared to the canonical wisdom texts — one only need read Sir 30 to see this (andto understand perhaps why the work was translated into Greek by the grandson and


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not the son). Yet the roots of Sirach’s wisdom can be seen in Ecclesiastes, it does notmove in a wholly new direction.

7 e Conservatism of Pseudo-Solomone final wisdom book P discusses is the Wisdom of Solomon. He follows a conven-tion that has arisen and designates the author of the work “Pseudo-Solomon” al-though without any real explanation, certainly without noting that the book itselfnever explicitly claims Solomonic authorship.7 Nonetheless, this is one of thestronger chapters in the book, although the reader needs to have some familiaritywith the texts P discusses (both in this chapter and throughout the book) because atmany places he seems to assume a reasonable degree of pre-understanding of the is-sues he discusses.For P, these last two texts undermine the very aspects of wisdom he finds appealing:“Pseudo-Solomon moves the wisdom tradition away from that which made it so dan-gerous and transgressive, its elevation of the human voice over the divine” (108).However, P’s characterisation of the biblical wisdom literature in this manner has notbeen convincingly demonstrated but arises out of a selective and rather tendentiousreading of the material, as discussed above. Qoheleth and Job make clear the veryprofound limitations of the human voice.

8 ConclusionP’s brief concluding chapter offers a revealing summary of the preceding material.Harold C. Washington says in his review of my book that “It is often observed instudies of Ecclesiastes that—perhaps because of the book’s tensions and ambigu-ities—commentators tend to project upon Qoheleth their own worldviews and dis-

7. e impression that the author seeks to draw a connection with Solomon is largely inferred fromWisdom 7.


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positions.”8 is is certainly seems to be the case with P’s book, and is reflected inpart in his conclusion:

In the midst of the rigid, patriarchal, conservative Israelite society, thereemerged a more progressive movement, the wisdom tradition, the traditi-on of the sages. Whereas religious elite controlled most segments of Israe-lite society, the sages, the wisdom movement, promoted independence ofthought and honest debate. e priests claimed authority from traditionand sacred texts, and the prophets received messages from God. e sages,however, trusted their own experience and observation as a source ofknowledge. ey fashioned a unique voice and tradition when comparedto the other collections of the Hebrew Bible. (111)

For P, wisdom was and is a “living tradition that responds and changes when facedwith a different context” (112). is is reflected in the evolution of wisdom:

… early wisdom, the first wave, tended towards optimism and confidence.ey were certain that God governed the universe with consistency andjustice. But subsequent sages, confronted with tragedies, both national andpersonal, had this confidence shaken. ese sages, the second wave, res-ponded by questioning and challenging the basis for that earlier confiden-ce. ey considered the implications of a universe where one cannot de-pend upon God. (112)

While, by and large, I think P is correct, he also doesn’t go far enough. e emphasisin both Job and even moreso in Ecclesiastes is that there is wisdom that cannot be at-tained. Qoheleth’s declaration that all is hebel, ‘senseless’, highlights not merely thefailure of traditional wisdom’s naive expectation that there ought to be a perceptiblemoral justice in the universe, but the failure of more progressive and speculative wis-dom to provide any answers at all. In the end, these sages have little to offer except tosay that the simple answers derived from a simplistic reading of wisdom materialslike Proverbs cannot be sustained. For the important questions, the ones which mostdeeply trouble and concern people, the sages could offer no satisfactory answer.

8. http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/5240_5519.pdf (Washington notes that I do not commit thiserror).


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9 Assessmentere are a number of good points to note about P’s book. His recognition that wis-dom is viewed negatively throughout most of the Hebrew Bible, for example, is animportant observation which has considerable bearing in understanding the rela-tionship of the wisdom literature to the remainder of the Bible. P also doesn’t pullany punches, raising questions and issues which are often avoided, overlooked, ordownplayed. ere is no doubt that these are important questions which scholarsneed to face and address.at being said, it should be apparent by now that I don’t find P’s analysis of biblicaland post-biblical wisdom particularly satisfying. His answers to these difficult ques-tions are unconvincing. Furthermore, P’s approach to the biblical texts wisdom textstends to downplay the final form of the text — Proverbs is divided into three voices,he is silent on Elihu’s place in Job and appears to ignore the poem of chapter 28,Ecclesiastes is a conglomeration of three distinct and seemingly incompatible voicescontrary to the frame-narrator’s opening directions to the reader. P also fails to ad-dress the presence and significance of the anti-wisdom elements in Job andQoheleth.While P quite reasonably finds readings which contrive to even out all the inconsist-encies of the texts unsatisfying, his own approach pushes too far the otherway — frequently highlighting and unnecessarily exaggerating dissonance even whensuch a reading is less plausible than less discordant alternatives. Yet the biblical wis-dom texts exhibit degrees of sophistication and subtlety in their construction whichimply considerable skill in those who put them into their final form.ere is a spectrum upon which works on the biblical Wisdom Literature can beplaced, proceeding from a point wherein everything is reconciled and consistentboth internally and within the broad spectrum of biblical literature, and progressingto a point which finds discord at every possible turn. P’s work clearly lies toward thelatter end of this spectrum, but ultimately it fails at too many points to serve as anadequate overview of biblical Wisdom Literature, nor does P adequately defend hisreadings to make it a work likely to compel many to agree with him who do notalready do so. P’s understanding of wisdom literature comes at the expense of toomany controlling factors to make it compelling.


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Review of David Penchansky, Understanding Wisdom Literature

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