Proverbs 10

More literally, “Proverbs of Solomon.” That’s a vague way to phrase it. It could mean the proverbs were by Solomon, for Solomon, about Solomon, or devoted to Solomon, among other possibilities. Students of the Bible, for a long time, said Solomon wrote Proverbs. They were encouraged by 1 Kings 3:6-12. There’s where God promised to answer the new king’s prayer for wisdom by making him wiser than anyone who had ever lived. And 1 Kings 4:32 says Solomon wrote 3,000 proverbs. The Book of Proverbs has less than 1,000. Solomon starts off reigning with lots of wisdom, but he ends up worshiping idols of his too-many wives (1 Kings 11). Some of the proverbs come from other sources, as the proverbs themselves report. For example, some otherwise unknown king named Lemuel reportedly wrote Proverbs 31. Actually, it sounds like his mother wrote it for him. He credits her with the insight. Some scholars would credit her with the words, given what is said about women.

More literally, “the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.” That puzzles many Bible experts, it doesn’t seem to parallel the first line. Parallel lines that repeat or contrast are customary in Hebrew poetry, much like rhyming is in much of English poetry. But some scholars say the line could be translated as “violence fills the mouth of the wicked.” That would seem to work as a parallel line, contrasting with the first line. Good people get blessed. Bad people get blasted.

This is a guess. Scholars say it’s unclear what kind of wink the writer is talking about. Magical? Deceptive? Insincere? We can probably rule out that it’s flirting and code for “Hey there, cutie.”

Déjà vu. This line repeats the last line in 10:8. Some Bible scholars wonder out loud if an editor was trying to create a unifying theme in a collection of proverbs no more united than a wok full of fortune cookies. That’s a common question about a variety of proverbs that don’t seem to make much sense and they don’t read like poetry.