Proverbs 22 Footnotes

22:6 This is a general statement about an important aspect of raising children. Children who grow up in an environment where God’s truth is modeled and where they are encouraged to live according to God’s order will likely end up embracing those values and living by them. There will be exceptions to the general rule. Proverbs recognizes that there are other important variables besides the parents’ teaching. Young people will often receive input from their peers (1:8-19) that can lead them away from God’s truth. The early chapters of Proverbs regularly exhort the young person to choose the parents’ teaching. This makes it clear that the will of the child and his ability to choose also play decisive roles in how the child turns out.

22:10 The “mocker” or scoffer is the most deliberate and intentional of the fools described in Proverbs. While there is more to dealing with strife than this, it is often the case that a divisive and disruptive person must be removed from the group before any real progress can be made.

22:17–24:22 Similarities exist between this section of Proverbs and an Egyptian composition called the Instructions of Amenemope, and the similarities suggest some sort of literary influence. Present evidence seems to indicate that the Egyptian piece is older than Proverbs, and it may well be that the biblical material was influenced by the Egyptian composition. The theology of this biblical section is thoroughly Israelite, and it is clear that the influence did not extend into that area. People made in the image of God have the ability to discover some of God’s order, and no theological problem is created if sages in Israel were influenced by Egyptian observations about wisdom. In this case the divine inspiration of the biblical material relates to the way the material was selected and modified for inclusion into inspired Scripture.