Proverbs 7 in MT and LXX: Form and Content

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Tova Forti and Zipora Talshir
The Argument—A witness monologue remodeled (Verses 6–20)
The main body of Prov 7 is constructed as a witness monologue, in which
the wisdom-teacher shares with his listeners an experience whose lesson is
the goal of his communication. This literary device renders the lesson more
credible, and evokes the audience’s involvement and readiness to listen and
accept. 29 Witness monologues appear occasionally in wisdom-oriented
compositions. Thus, the author of Ps 37 adds his own experience in order to
emphasize his teaching: “I have been young and am now old, but I have
never seen a righteous man abandoned, or his children seeking bread”
(v. 25); “I saw a wicked man, powerful, well-rooted like a robust native tree.
Suddenly he vanished and was gone; I sought him, but he was not to be
found” (vv. 35–36). The entire teaching of Qoheleth is anchored in his
personal deductions from his own experience, expressed in different ways,
for example, by the repeatedly used introduction: “I said to myself...” (e.g.,
Qoh 2:1). In Prov 4:3–4 the wisdom-teacher evokes empathy in his ‘son’ by
anchoring his teaching in the way he himself was coached: “Once I was a
son to my father, the tender darling of my mother. He instructed me and
said to me...”. 30
Witness monologues are not common in Proverbs. In fact, there are only
two examples in which the wisdom-teacher makes ingenious use of this
literary device, elaborating at length on an incident he experienced: 31 the
elaborate speech under discussion (7:6–20), and the short but
intense communication on the sluggard in 24:30–34. Interestingly, both of
29 See McKane, Proverbs, 572; R.E. Murphy, Proverbs (WBC; Nashville, 1998) 186;
C.A. Briggs and E.G. Briggs, The Book of Psalms (2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh, 1906) 1:329.
30 See Ben Sira’s nostalgic monologue on his own learning in his youth (Sir
51:13–22).
31 Saadia Gaon defines these cases as allegories: ‘The wisdom-teacher forwards
allegories and articulates them as events that really took place’; Saadia Gaon,
Proverbs (ed. Y. Kafih; Jerusalem, 1976) 69–70 (Heb., translated from Arabic). In the
introduction, 15–16, he mentions Prov 7 and 24:30–32 together with Qoh 9:14–15 as
examples for such allegories. See Fox, Proverbs, 241.