Broken “Promises” in Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs contains lots of tidbits of wisdom. Some of them are very insightful, although most of them seem rather shallow to me. I once summarized this book as, “It’s good to be good, and it’s bad to be bad.”

Proverbs has some things to say about wealth and poverty, and, more generally, about why bad things happen to people. Some of the proverbs are true if you consider spiritual, rather than physical, blessings. For example, when Proverbs 3:33 says that God blesses the righteous, and Proverbs 28:20 says that the righteous will abound with blessings, they are true if you believe that the blessings consist of the satisfaction of knowing that you are living in the right way. And many of the proverbs can be considered true if you think of eternal life, rather than life here and now; for example, Proverbs 11:19 says evil people will die. But many of these passages are wrong, if taken literally. Some of them say that if you are lazy, a drunkard, or both, you cannot expect anything except poverty. But we all know or know of very rich people who are lazy drunkards. But even more than this, many of the proverbs can be interpreted to mean that poor people have only themselves to blame for their poverty. Here are some examples, with summaries:

• God does not let the righteous go hungry (10:3).
• God’s blessings will make you rich (10:22).
• Respect for God will make you live longer (10:27).
• God keeps righteous people from trouble (11:8).
• The wicked will not go unpunished (11:21).
• The house of the righteous will stand (12:7).
• No harm occurs to righteous people (12:21).
• Good people reap the good reward that they deserve (14:14).
• Righteous people are rich (15:6).
• Your plans will work out if you are godly (16:3).
• Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity (21:5).
• The reward for righteousness is riches, honor, and life (22:4).
• Those who work their land will have abundant food (28:19).

One can argue that these passages are true in the sense that, on the average, living a good life will make you richer and less troubled than living a bad life. But, if you take them at face value, these promises to you as an individual are false. These proverbs are as false as the common American belief that if you work hard you will succeed. This belief is true only as a generalization, not an individual promise. Taking the generalized interpretation instead of the literal one does not bother me, but Biblical literalists should be bothered by this.

Especially since all of these promises are directly disputed by two other books in the Bible: Ecclesiastes, and Job. Job is a righteous man who experiences the worst indignities and sufferings that can be imagined.

I see the Bible as the best attempt of intelligent and thoughtful people to make sense out of their world in ancient times. But conservatives force an interpretation on it that is clearly wrong. Among other things, the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible (such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job) do not themselves claim to be the word or words of God.