Friday, December 8, 2017

Is Proverbs 3:5 espousing anti-intellectualism?

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. (Prov 3:5)

One often sees this verse as being used to support a rather anti-intellectual approach to the Gospel (notwithstanding Moroni 10:3-5 which stresses the need to ponder things, as well as Heb 11 and Alma 32). One could always say, rather correctly, that such is proverbial literature, and should not be absolutised. More importantly, as Roland E. Murphy, who was an expert on Wisdom literature, noted in his commentary on the book of Proverbs:

5–6 O. Plöger points out that wisdom joins Yahwism (were they ever really separate?) in this command to trust in the Lord, an ideal that is sounded frequently in the Psalter and elsewhere. The contrast between such trust and one’s own intelligence or insight is not a put-down of wisdom teaching, because the truly wise person knows of limits. Wisdom is a gift of God (2:6), but whoever claims to be wise is more foolish than the fool (Prov 26:12; cf. also Jer 9:22–23), and the next couplet (vv 7–8) reinforces this idea. The Lord’s role in the ways of humans is also indicated in 16:9 and 20:24 (cf. Hos 14:10 [v. 9 in the KJV, etc]). (Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs [Word Biblical Commentary vol. 22; Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998], 21; comment in square brackets added for clarification)








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